TAMPA, Fla. – The path Tiana Marshall took in life led to hardships.
“I was a preacher kid,” she explained. “But I was kind of rough, you know? So the plans that were laid out before me, but I kind of went the other way.”
As a teenager, she had a child, got married and divorced.
“I’ve also been through domestic abuse,” she shared. “I’ve also been through sexual molestation as a child. So, I’ve gone through some things and it took me some time to realize how those things affected me. How they hindered me from discovering who I really was.”
She decided to take the lessons she learned to start “Tiana’s Tea,” also called TNT, a non-profit organization to inspire, encourage and empower women.
“I feel like women can accomplish so much together. Sometimes we distance ourselves from each other because we look at the outside the exterior of a woman, and we don’t know what she’s been through, and we figure that she can’t relate to what I’ve been through. But one conversation with that woman can tell you a whole lot. She can not only relate to what you’ve been through, but she can help you overcome it. And I feel like that’s how we get unstuck,” Marshall said.
To help women get on the right track, Marshall sponsors events throughout the year like her annual domestic violence and breast cancer events.
“Women can feel comfortable knowing that they don’t have to suffer in silence,” she explained. “They don’t have to suffer alone. They have other women that they can talk to. They can reach out to and create authentic relationships because we have so many judgments about each other that keeps us distant from each other.”
Marshall is helping women get closer. She has more than 4,000 women on her private social media site.
“It debunks the lie that women can’t get along. I feel like we can get along. We can also support each other. We can pray for each other. We can laugh, we can help each other and so that is what TNT does in various ways.”
Her goal is to stop the cycle that happens in dysfunctional families.
“Dysfunctional women have the tendency to birth dysfunctional children, which creates dysfunctional families. And so if we can work on the woman and get her functioning, then she begins to raise functioning children, which creates functional families, which creates a functional society.”
A society that she hopes to help change. Marshall hopes to one day create a sisterhood that reaches across the nation.
Article Credits: Fox13