Leaders Gather to Support NAHT’s Work at the Daisy Circle Ladies Leadership Luncheon

On a beautiful spring day, ladies clad in florals and pastels arrived at the Tennessee Governor’s Residence for the Nashville Anti-Human Trafficking (NAHT) Ladies Leadership Luncheon. Event co-chairs Cecile Gideon, Janice Goodwin and Memree Roberts made the rounds, greeting guests by name as revelers visited and stopped for photos. The organization was founded in 2019 to rescue, restore and resource women and children affected by human trafficking and addiction.

Bethel World Outreach Church opened the afternoon with music, as guests enjoyed a seasonally appropriate garden vegetable salad with grilled chicken. Lunch ended with delightful sweet treats — petits fours from NAHT’s Sweet Daisy bakery.

NAHT founder and executive director Mary Trapnell thanked Gov. Bill Lee and Tennessee First Lady Maria Lee, who she said have “faithfully stood by NAHT in the fight against human trafficking.” She then thoughtfully introduced the day’s speaker — survivor, author and advocate Cyntoia Brown Long. At age 16, Cyntoia went to prison for killing a man while she was a sex trafficking victim. Though Cyntoia had been sent to prison for life, in 2019, Gov. Bill Haslam commuted her sentence to the 15 years she’d already served. 

Cyntoia shared that, at events, she usually gives a carefully prepared speech about her experience as a sex trafficking survivor. “But the past six months, the Lord has been … challenging me and pulling me out of my comfort zone,” she said. A recent conversation with a pastor prompted this shift. “We were speaking about the ashes [of] things burned to the ground, and how it feels like everything is broken, and [how you can] pull that together and create something new and something beautiful,” she said. “And something in that moment spoke to me about soapmaking.” 

Cyntoia, who has been making soap for the last three years, noted that lye — a crucial ingredient in soapmaking — is made by mixing ash with water. It occurred to her that, just like soapmaking transforms lye into something useful, her faith has turned her life into something beautiful — a way to help others.