“I have never felt loved...”
Wendy took her first hit of crack cocaine when she was 13. Her mother provided it. She was immediately addicted. She turned to selling sex as both a means of survival (when her mother was off battling her own addiction) and to support her new-found drug habit.
When she was a teenager, she didn’t understand the consequences of her actions—but she knew she was getting money to support herself and her addiction.
“After a while, though, I started to feel as if that was all I was good for. Having any sort of normal sex life or relationship became impossible for me… and honestly, it still isn’t a thing I can do. I can’t see past the sea of faces with no names.”
“I have never felt loved. Not until I had my little girl.”
Wendy was 35 before she believed leaving the sex trade was a possibility. By this point, she had a young daughter that she would leave with her grandparents so she could go “work.” When Wendy’s daughter started calling her grandmother “momma,” she knew she needed out.
“That hit me hard in my chest. I knew that if I didn’t get myself together that it was going to greatly affect her.”
A big change happened shortly after that realization—she posted an advertisement for sex and someone who recognized her responded, threatening to call Child Protective Services (CPS).
“I could not imagine losing my daughter. She was the only good thing that ever happened to me, and the only good that I feel that I have done as well. No more in and out of the life. I was done.”
“Someone from REST reached out to me.”
Before Wendy had left the sex trade for good, she had received texts from a woman at REST who had found her number through her online ads, offering relationship and services.
“She replied to one of my ads on Backpage, and was quite persistent. I finally agreed to meet and have coffee and talk with her. I was still one foot in/one foot out for quite some time after meeting her, but she stayed consistent in my life. She was always there for me when I needed, always talking me off the ledge at the times that I felt tired, tired of hurting, and tired of the pain.”
REST was able to support Wendy as she left the life she had known since she was 13. She deleted all of her contacts including her regulars, got rid of her “work” phone altogether, and moved away.
“I am the only woman that my little girl calls momma!”
Wendy left the sex trade once and for all when she was 36. She has been out for two years now. She’s clean from a 23-year addiction, has custody of her daughter, and is a published author. She’s still in touch with her REST Advocate—a woman she now considers a friend.
She knows now that she is loved.
“God loves me, and of course my little girl loves me, but now I can honestly say that I LOVE ME.”
Wendy, a published author, decided to use her real name and a photo she provided—read more about this decision in our 2019 Annual Report, where REST first shared her story.