Finding A New Identity After Leaving the Adult Entertainment Industry

Tammie remembers, “When I was growing up I would hear a voice, ‘You were made for more.’ And those words tormented me because they were so opposite of my experience.”

“My mom and my stepdad were addicts, drug addicts. And so I was raised in a lot of sexual abuse, a lot of emotional abuse, a lot of physical abuse and on top of that. Lived with a lot of anger and hate towards myself. I felt like if I'm not loved, then there's something about me that's not lovable.”

“I left home when I was 15 years old. I dropped out of school. I ended up with a boyfriend that was willing to take me out of the situation. And I ended up in a worse situation but just in a different kind of way. There was a lot of sexual perversion. I just had no value.  I had no sense of worth. But I had nowhere to go.”

Tammie recalls, “I met a woman who was a entertainment dancer. And she gave me her number on a piece of paper and said ‘Call me if you ever need help.’ And I remember saying to her, ‘I would never do that.’”

“I was in a hopeless situation that I didn't know how to get out of. I remember pouring different poisons into a glass in the bathroom and shaking it up and drinking it. Because life wasn’t worth living.”

“Instead of dying, I threw my guts up. I thought that my only option was dancing because I didn't have a way out.”

Tammie remembers, “The first time that I ever walked into the club I wanted to run. Drugs became my best friend really because they helped me to morph into this person that I wasn't.”

“I remember feeling like such trash. I was a trashy girl. And so dancing, I really felt like I acted out and it just reaffirmed how I felt about myself.”

“I met this guy named Aaron when I was 16 years old. And he was just a really great guy. And we began dating almost immediately, but as I was struggling at work with what I was going through, I had no other woman that was a normal woman, to talk to to try to understand what it was that I was experiencing, my boyfriend's mother was the one that continued to be heavy on my heart to go and talk to.”

“I didn’t feel any sense of shame or embarrassment after talking to her. She just loved on me. She gave me a hug. And that began a beautiful, beautiful relationship.”

“She came to me one day and she said, ‘I have been talking to my sisters and we are going to help you to get a job, I couldn't believe what was happening to me. It felt almost like a fairy tale.”

“I'm working downtown Houston and feeling on top of the world, and yet I was still the same me on the inside, it wasn’t enough to fill my emptiness.”

Tammie says, “When I married Aaron and we have this beautiful baby, I looked in her little face and I remember thinking, ‘If I don't have God, I am going to mess her up.’"

“I started going to church. I walked the aisle and I professed faith in Christ and I looked like I was a Christian, but had not yet found a relationship with God.”  

“There was a prayer event at a friend's church. And I remember going to a couple of classes and just, saying, ‘God, I want what they have.  I want to know you. I don’t know how to know you, but would you please, you know, save me?  Would you please come change me? Would you please make me like them?’”

“In an instant he came rushing down on me and I felt love like I've never known, and peace like I had never known. I'd never known peace.”

“I felt so valued.  I felt like a daughter.”

“I couldn’t put the Bible down. God began working on my heart really helping me to work through all of the brokenness of my past.”

Tammie says, “And I think that’s why I love Jesus so much because he’s given me life and He’s given me a reason to live.”