Halo Missions Helps Nashville Women Find a Way Out of Addiction

April 1, 2020 - Live Eat Play Nashville is excited to partner with Halo Missions. Read more about the work of this amazing company in the guest blog below. You can support Halo Missions by purchasing some of their beautiful jewelry and sharing this post with your friends, family, and social networks! Visit their ad on bit.ly/ShoppingInNashvilleLiveEatPlay

The story of Halo Missions:

Hi, my name is Kristen Thorbjornsen. Owner and Operator of Halo Missions here in Nashville, TN.

 Halo Missions is a vocational rehabilitation service group for women in different stages of drug and alcohol recovery. The women are taught how to handcraft our guitar string jewelry. This provides a great source of art therapy as well as a form of supplemental income. 

Halo Missions was created in Spring of 2017 by two women in recovery themselves, me being one. This story, however, is a sad one, but we kept on going in hopes to touch others' lives affected by addiction.

My business partner, Brooke Anderson was in recovery and lost her life two days after we applied for our business paperwork to the disease. Relapse is so powerful and happens a lot. I know if she would’ve known what would happen, she wouldn’t have chosen this path, so this is a message to those who have had these thoughts of trying something “one more time,” it’s a real thing and it will hurt you and everyone around you. This was, of course, devastating to her family, myself and the women she had been working with.

This was painful in every way. However, I decided to use this as a reminder and keep on going with our mission we had in mind, I’m so glad I did.

With the help of many other women, my very supporting husband, and children and my cousin Brandy Cagle, we pushed for an open date and made it happen. 

How Halo Missions operates is, by taking used and played guitar strings donated to our mission to the recovering women and then, taking the beautiful jewelry the women make and bring to our mobile downtown Nashville cart to sell the items. Not only do we get to sell to tourists all over the Nation, we are also located in stores throughout the USA as well.

One store that we love dearly is located right in the heart of Nashville on 2nd Ave, also close to all the Honky Tonks. This amazing store is called “Ensemble” if you're ever in Nashville, you must stop by and see them.

Our brand is also carried in all “House of Blues” locations throughout the USA, several more shops in Tennessee, also in some other small boutiques as well throughout the USA.

Only being open for three years now, we have accomplished so much, Brooke would be proud and I know she is, after all, this was our goal.

We have been able to employ, in the last 3 years, a total of 32 women. Some women have been working with us from the beginning because they just love and support the mission and some have moved on but in a good way. We have had lots of women gain custody back of their children that they lost due to their addictions and had marriages restored and gained financial security.

Recovery is a blessing each and everyday. I don’t take this lightly and thank God, my family, my friends and the amazing women here at Halo Missions. We also thank this article for helping us spread our mission, a very famous quote is something we all live by, “We can’t do this alone.” I will always think of this in good and bad times and hope we prosper through this very trying time the nation is in right now. Our prayers go out to everyone.