Today we’d like to introduce you to Gracie Tuck.
Hi Gracie, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
They say children of addicts are 8x more likely to become one themselves. & I was born into that statistic on both sides. I come from a broken and battereed family that was drowning in the struggles of drug addictions, alcoholism, crime, and just almost anything else you can think of. Being a child living in the shadow of addiction was my whole life so to me it was normalcy.
No water
No electricity
No food
Holidays and birthdays just being like any other day some days
Cps checks at school
Staying the night in random men’s living rooms with my little brother
All the adults going to one room locking the doors and coming out all weird
Peeing in cups for my mom
My parents sometimes sleeping for days and not waking up no matter what
All that was my normal, so for a while I thought it was everyone else’s too. But the older I got the more differences I began to realize between me and the other kids, and vise versa. I always was in raggedy clothes with wild hair, I never had money for book fairs or extracurriculars, i missed lots of field trips, my mom wasn’t at a bunch of school stuff like the others, so that started to divide me a part from my peers and make me a target for constant bullying my whole elementary life. When I was about 7 years old my mom had gotten pregnant by her boyfriend, they were both heavily addicted to drugs and a baby was the last thing they needed, the stress of a pregnancy and the drug use took a really big toll on my mothers health and she developed congestive heart failure. For months upon months we were filled with hope of a new heart and new procedures, but each and every time it fell through because she just couldn’t overcome the addiction. I remember alway wanting my dad, always leaving town with him or pestering til he came to get me, especially in the end. My mom developed an issue where she wasn’t getting enough oxygen to her brain, it made her not herself so she didn’t like me in the end, and while I understand now, as a child I remember feeling like I was her adult and not comphrending why she hated me so much. She claimed to my dad it’s because she can’t love two people at once. That’s when I really accepted she was going to die. About a week later my dad broke the news that she was in fact dying. That same night she died my dad and I were abruptly awoken to bright lights, screaming, and not being able to breathe. We were getting raided, the cops drug us out and I watched as my dad was fighting to get up to tell the I’m a kid while they beat him down and held me down with big guns held to my head. My dad went to jail an went went to live with his parents. My grandparents did their best and loved us a lot. A few months after my mom passed, I was getting on a motorcycle with my grandpa, but my dad pulled up and took me off because he hated me and my brother riding motorcycles, well my grandpa got in a motorcycle accident that night and also died, and a few months after that i woke up and found my grandmas cold dead body. We hopped around between my older siblings homes, my oldest sister ended up adopting my baby sister as her own, and we went to our brothers that were bad alcoholics, til my dad got out. My dad got out and did good for a while, but addiction isn’t easy to understand and it came back. Except this time I realized what it was a lot quicker, I started having terrible night mares, sleep paralysis, I was seeing demonic figures and hearing demonic voices when I’d yell for my dad, I became so scared and depressed and it lead to self harm because I just wanted to feel like I was in control of something. This all sounds bad and scary but all that is what lead up to my relationship with God. I LITERALLY had nothing, but I had a Bible. I read the whole Bible front to back, I was young so i didn’t understand it completely. I never ate pork, wore gold, braided my hair, or anything like that because my understanding at the time was I wasn’t supposed too. And while I may have got that wrong I got the part about how much Jesus loves me and will save me, right. We ended up moving back to Somerville, things got worse and worse, but I stuck to God. And God stuck to us, Ms. Brayla Landolt Leighton, a lady that has become my mom-in-Christ, found us. There’s a little church called Lyons Evangelical Church, and the ladys knew my mom when she was a kid, well they found us and started coming and getting us for church every morning. And there Brayla found me. Every holiday, every time before the school year, she would bring us boxes of gifts for Christmas, or food for thanksgiving, or supplies and clothes for school, she would message me making sure we were ok and just constantly and sacrificially showed me the love of God and became the person I aspired to be like. Two kids who were of no relation to, she started loving and caring for like they were her own. It baffled me the way she went out of her way to always love us. And still to this day I love her with my whole heart and talk to her every day, she’s the best person I know. My brother and I got sent to live with lots of different families, ended up in lots of different schools and towns, but every time she found us. She never gave up on us when it felt like every one else had. My dad went back to jail and we ended up going to live with his cousin in Anderson. She had two kids a little older than us and my dad really loved that side of his family so he trusted them. In the beginning it was amazing, there was consistency and lots of funny stories, but when things settled down things just gradually got worse. Addiction entered the house, the kids started being mean to my brother and I, and a couple different forms of abuse started. I revealed the abuse to an adult and we were removed and put now with my oldest brother back in Somerville. It was a couple years later I met my amazing wonderful husband who led me so much closer to God, him and his family taught me the meaning of things I didn’t understand, showed me fellowship, and just loved me in a way that I knew I never wanted to lose. My dad got out of prison, got with my now step mom, and got a house. Everything was good. But then, like almost every addict, he relapsed again. People think kids can’t tell, but I knew. I cried to my now husband so hard and just kept saying “he’s going to die. He’s going to die like my mom, he can’t die.” The next day he was sleeping and the Katy Nicole song “I Speak Jesus” just came out, I started praying that song over him while he slept. And this sounds so made up but literally the next hour he woke up and sad “I’m going to start a N/A group Gracie.” And I was like “huh? What’s that?” So he explained. And I had never felt that type of joy in my entire life. That day my dad’s life completely changed. He’s always been my best friend but now it’s just different. He’s taught me and led me to understand so much, he’s helped save so many lives, I’ve never met someone who’s made as drastic as a change as he has. He changed all of our lives by changing his own. Well after that I graduated, I got married, I started thinking “is my testimony over? Did all that happen now I’m gonna live a boring normal life?” So I do for a while. Then I got pregnant and God teaches you a whole new world when you become a mom. I had the smoothest pregnancy and a pretty chill birth. Then post partum came and rocked my world. The night time scared me, being alone terrified me, I remember so many night sitting there with a gun just thinking about how peaceful death would be. But I didn’t want to be the reason my dad relapsed so instead I started talking to my older brother every single day all day, and he kept me sane and reminded me God isn’t going to let me live like this forever. I remember crying so much wanting a mom. Just wanting someone to come and help me, to help me cook, or drive me to the store, or let me cry to them, or just go out and about with me. I was a momless mom and it was the worst feeling ever. Between my brother, my husband, my dad, and most importantly God I survived. I took that as God humbling me about questioning if my testimony was over. God shortly after led us to Brenham. I had always loved sweet a foods and tastes and I got into coffee and fell in loveee. I started studying beans and espresso quality and just really doing a deep dive, I had always longed for my own business that represented and glorified God. And God took over and absolutely exceeded my expectations. I never ina a million years would have thought I could be where I am right now at only 20 years old. But God has a crazy way of making miracles happen. God gave me Abide, and I truly believe Abide is a testimony to the other kids like me, that you are not what people whisper you are, you are not a statistic, you are who GOD called you to be, your identity is in HIM. Not in this world, and no one can take away or deter what God has for you. God has rocked my world in the most blessed way possible. Motherhood and my family is my absolute biggest ministry. Through this business though God has built the most amazing relationships, I have made so many amazing friends, gotten involved with so many wonderful group, and just been given more opportunities than explainable, other than God. Through mother hood, wife hood, and this business God has refined me in the most beautiful miraculous way possible. I deserve absolutely none of this, I deserve nothing at all, but God for some reason has blessed me with so much. The little girl that went through the craziness I did would never at any point in life think I’d be here where I am today. SoI just want us ti all love each other like Jesus does, because you never know.. I wouldn’t have a beautiful testimony of God’s goodness if it wouldn’t have been for my past endeavors or my dad choosing to be the chain breaker. Now I’m a 20 year old mom, wife, and owner of a thriving business. I don’t plan on stopping here I plan to grown this into a storefront, a brand, and a community pillar. My next dream is to have a shop that is a place where everyone is welcome, where tired moms can come to talk to a adult for the first time all day, where N/A groups can gather to help eachother keep walking the sober path, for youth groups, grandparents with their children , and regulars. I want this business/brand to be a beam of hope to other kids like me that you don’t have to live a perfect life to build a life you’re proud of.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Nothing good comes easy, but it has been a blessed road. We’ve ran into a lot of dilemmas and hardships, we poured lots of money into the business, the first month of it being our sole income we were fearing not being able to pay our personal bills, but life has been better than it ever has been, it’s a young but thriving business. It takes so much time and effort but it’s worth it, it’s easier to work for other people for sure, but this is so much more rewarding.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I feel like I’m a flavor artist. I love to cook, bake, and concoct new flavors combinations. I love plating food and decorating cakes and baked goods, decorative cakes is actually how this all started, I started when I was 15 doing those, and it just blossomed from there. I speacilized in decorative cakes but it flooded into other areas. I strongly believe you eat with your eyes first, so I strive to have pretty products. I’m most proud of the beautiful presentation of our drinks, and the amazing flavor profile of them. We get compliments so often on how unique and diverse our menu is, and how the drinks taste even better than they look, the majority of our syrups are homemade who can make a difference, everything is measured in the drinks for consistency. Our emphasis on customer service and making everyone feel like someone, our unique but rich flavor profiles and beautiful presentation makes me proud
What matters most to you?
If you mean of my business then definitely community and quality, without either we’d be nothing. If you mean personally the. 100% God and family, without those my business and myself would be absolutely nothing
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_abidecoffeeco_?igsh=aHIzaXphd25haTZh&utm_source=qr
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1Chjz8GZTF/?mibextid=wwXIfr
