Today we’d like to introduce you to Emily Mills.
Emily, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
It’s common to ask ourselves, “how did I end up here?”. But the truth about our stories is that the data tells the truth and the body keeps the score. The reality is, most of us haven’t spent time with our own stories, with our own data, to figure out the why of our lives. For many many years, I ignored a very formative reality, a reality that I feared might cause my family shame, might disrupt my perfect image, might make me…well…defective. It wasn’t until college that I began to name what happened during childhood as childhood sexual abuse. College is a time where our ego and our true self really begin to duke it out for control and what’s been left undone in adolescence finally gets a chance to come into the light. Part of college also means getting involved in lots of new experiences and opportunities. It was at Baylor University that my draw toward ministry and marginalized groups, particularly women, began to form. I was a singer and found my way singing across several different stages but was also drawn to “off-beat” service opportunities. I served at the homeless breakfast on Friday Mornings through Mission Waco and would meet many women who had been working in prostitution all night then would come in for the meal, songs, and the gratitude circle. Those circles happened in 1999, 20 years ago, and they changed me.
I married my co-partner, singer/musician boyfriend, Brett, in 2000. We galavanted around the country, and some internationally, singing in Christian music circles and leading worship. But each Friday morning that I was home, I would try to be at the homeless breakfast and the growing chasm between women in prostitution and available resources ate away at my gut. In 2003 we had our first baby girl and in 2004 we ended up in Austin, TX singing for a women’s event. This event set us on the path toward Lovely Enterprises and wrecked us both for good. One by one, women from the sex industry took the stage and shared their stories. Their stories included the thread that I now know wove us both together: gender violence – the sexual abuse of women and children.
That night I told my husband that I wanted to hit up the strip clubs in Waco and bring gifts to the women there. That was 2004. In 2007 we named the ministry, Jesus Said love, in 2009 we launched outreaches in Dallas and by 2017 we had outreaches happening in not only Waco and Dallas but San Antonio, Houston, Tyler, Bryan College Station and Fort Hood/Killeen. However, it became apparent pretty early on that what women in the sex industry wasn’t just gift bags and the love of Christ. In fact, Love compelled us to create JOBS.
In 2016 we launched Lovely Enterprises online and in Uptown Waco, TX as the social enterprise of Jesus Said Love. Our mission is to reduce recidivism into the sex trade by providing livable wage jobs and microloans to survivors. We do this through online sales, wholesale accounts and pop up shows and sell only ethically sourced and socially responsible goods, most of which we make on site!
For the past decade, we have listened to what women in the sex industry wanted and the overwhelming voice rising above all the noise and trauma of their experiences was: “we need jobs, and we need a way to keep the job we get.” Working in tandem with JSL provides a family of love and belonging as trauma-informed volunteers and staff create a safe place to grow, learn and fail forward. To date we have secured a wholesale account with Magnolia, make our own products on site and have launched two businesses: Luna Juice bar which can be found at the Magnolia Silo’s and on Austin Ave. and Eye Hart Brow – a permanent cosmetic business who also does areola reconstruction for cancer survivors! We also have two more students enrolled through our entrepreneurial program who are set to launch Fall 2019.
All and all, I see my story woven in the fabric of every woman Lovely reaches. I believe that women who have survived so much hurt and harm have ultimately paved my own path for healing. I am a better woman, mom, wife, singer/songwriter, boss and overall human today because of what I have learned through this work.
Has it been a smooth road?
If you’re on a smooth road then you’ve never been to the worlds most beautiful places. The same is true of our journey. I don’t trust a leader without a limp. I have learned not to hide my imperfections but bless and embrace them, they have a lot to teach me if I will listen. And I can’t listen to my own story if I’m constantly trying to define it by other standards. In the world of ministry, I had to quit looking for approval from so-called authority, and really learn to lean into the individual authority I possessed. I think the greatest challenge on the road of life is how to stay soft in a world that is so hard – and the only way you can stay soft in your soul is through a lifestyle of love. If I find myself hard, rigid, controlling and short, it usually means I need to practice more love toward myself and more gratitude for others.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Lovely Enterprises story. Tell us more about the business.
I am most proud of Lovely because we value people over product. We had a mission before we had anything to sell. We listen to the stories of survivors, we value their skill sets, their ideas and we grow based on what they want and what our customers want to buy. We really see Lovely as this beautiful bridge between women who’ve been marginalized systemically through poverty to women who have access to income but likely possess a story of pain and poverty as well. We really are so much more alike than we realize and it gets me so excited to see how much women are learning from one another at Lovely.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
We are looking at strategic next steps to grow and scale. This is hard work that takes all or nothing kind of clarity and execution. My husband and I are dreamers and visionaries and our staff is super small. But we really believe that staying personally healthy, asking the right questions to the right people, and working hard is the way we grow. Pie in the sky vision is to have Lovely become a company that can sustain hundreds of employees – namely women who’ve survived sex exploitation and/or sex trafficking. What’s beautiful about the world today is that there are a lot of socially minded companies working toward this goal in other sectors.
Texas has some of the highest rates of impoverished women (the number one at-risk group for trafficking) and some of the highest ranked cities for trafficking. If not one other woman or child was ever trafficked or exploited again, we would still have hundreds of thousands of woman impacted today. The only thing that changes this paradigm of gender inequality and upward economic mobility for women impacted by commercial sex is better jobs and better wages. We want Lovely to fill that gap.
Pricing:
- Hand Woven Turkish Beach Towels $35
Contact Info:
- Address: 1500 Columbus Ave
Waco, TX - Website: ourlovelystore.com
- Phone: 254-340-0465
- Email: lovely@jesussaidlove.com
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