photograph courtesy thistle & Bee
The women who are part of Thistle & Bee are survivors. Through the process of tending to bees, they learn new ways of tending to themselves.
Editor's Note: The spring and summer of 2020 have presented days when many learned new-to-us skills, the kind that aren’t so new at all: growing vegetable gardens from seed, tending to sourdough starters, relying more on what we can create than on what we can procure. But long before the coronavirus pandemic, plenty of people in Memphis were growing and making both tangible and intangible goods. In this homebound season, we have chosen to present several local organizations who are bringing new meaning to what ‘homegrown’ signifies. — Anna Traverse Fogle
In a dozen sites around the Memphis area, buzzing hives of bees are nestled, humming towards honey. At regular intervals, courageous women appear, clad like earthbound astronauts, to tend to the bees. These women are not courageous simply for donning beekeeping suits and plunging into hives — although surely this can take some getting used to — but for what they have survived: sexual exploitation, substance use disorder, original traumas and the traumas those germinate.
Thistle & Bee was founded in Memphis in 2015 by the Reverend Eyleen Farmer, formerly of Calvary Episcopal Church. Since last year, Eli Cloud has been executive director of the organization, which she describes as a social-justice enterprise. Women who enter Thistle & Bee are typically referred by one of several local treatment centers. They must have been sober for a minimum of 30 days — Thistle & Bee is not set up as a detox facility — and any minor children cannot currently be in their custody, so that the women may focus on their own healing. The enterprise’s organizing goals: To create a safe space where women learn to work together as a team and hone translatable job skills.
Many may know Thistle & Bee primarily through their products — jarred honey, handmade granola, milk-and-honey soaps, beeswax candles, a well-balanced mint and lemon-balm tea — available at local retailers, the Cooper-Young Farmers’ Market, and online. The honey is floral and complex, though not overpoweringly so; the soaps, patterned like beehives, are almost too pretty to use.
“Six women doesn’t sound like a lot. But these six women — some of them will be inspired to work with this program and help other women off the streets. They are creating seeds of change.” — Eli Cloud
All of those products are the work of the women in the Thistle & Bee program. These women were exploited and traumatized; many were compelled into prostitution. Cloud recalls being asked more than once whether the women in the program were trafficked or had chosen to become prostitutes. The way she sees it, choosing prostitution is no choice at all. One woman was just 3 years old when she began to be raped by a family member; another was 5. Nearly all suffered some form of trauma; many were trafficked. “They didn’t make these choices,” she says. “No one chooses to become a prostitute. But they are making choices now,” now that they are choosing to prioritize their own recovery.
The program lasts two years. In the beginning phases of their time at Thistle & Bee, women are ineligible to work on anything other than themselves. They must first spend time in intensive outpatient therapy; throughout, Thistle and Bee recognizes that transformation happens from the inside out. After six months, women join the production team — baking granola, bottling honey, fulfilling orders. Later, they transition to what Cloud calls the “Bee Team,” checking on the hives, tending to the bees.
Since April last year, Thistle & Bee’s mission has included a residential program, a safe house at an unpublished location. The residence is equipped to house six women at a time. This spring and early summer, as Covid-19 snaked its way into the Memphis area, the operation shifted somewhat; retail sales suffered, direct event sales have been off entirely with event cancellations, and the team took time away from the farmers’ market. Retailers are beginning to reopen, though, and granola production is ramping up again. Over Zoom, Cloud shows me a little tin of beeswax lip balm whose formula she’s been perfecting in her home kitchen over a double boiler. Soon, she’ll be teaching the women how to craft the lip balm themselves.
Cloud wants people to understand that the impact of Thistle & Bee cannot be measured by the number of women in the program at a given time. Yes, she says, “Six women doesn’t sound like a lot. But these six women — some of them will be inspired to work with this program and help other women off the streets. They are creating seeds of change.” Seeds that grow flowers, to be pollinated by bees, to transform into honey, to change lives.
For more information, visit thistleandbee.org
