Contact: Caroline Medlin
615-686-3250
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 15, 2020
Susan Bryan Moffitt has spent more days in prison than a lot of women her age.
Often, her phone rings late at night with a call about an inmate who is pregnant and wants to meet with her. Twelve hours later, she is standing in the chaplain’s office at the Tennessee State Prison for Women. After speaking with the inmate, Susan begins the process of matching a Jonah’s Journey caregiving family with the mother and her soon-to-be born baby.
When Jonah’s Journey needed help to become a licensed agency in 2014, the organization brought on Susan, who had graduated with her Master of Social Work from Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee. She helped get everything ready for licensure and then she has been with Jonah’s Journey ever since.
Susan worked with teenage girls in foster care 25 years ago. One of the reasons that Susan was drawn to Jonah’s Journey is because of one teenage girl in particular.
Alice* stayed with Susan on and off after she aged out of foster care. When Alice* became a new mom, she spent several months with Susan. This relationship played a pivotal role in Susan’s desire to step in and work with incarcerated moms. Working with these girls opened her heart in to loving incarcerated mothers. Susan saw how vulnerable the teenage girls who aged out of foster care really were. She witnessed firsthand how hard it was for them to get their feet on the ground as adults and for some as new moms.
Susan became the director of Jonah’s Journey in 2008 when it first became an official not-for-profit. In 2014, Jonah’s Journey joined under the umbrella of Palmer Home and became licensed by the state.
Susan is the mother of two and an advocate for the voiceless. She is a lover of baked goods and good books. Susan is a member at Long Hollow Baptist Church in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
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Jonah’s Journey began in 2008 after one family felt the call and provided a caring, loving home for baby Jonah, whose mother gave birth to him while incarcerated at the Tennessee Prison for Women. The organization made it possible for Jonah to eventually reunite with his birth mother and also began Jonah’s Journey, an alternative to state foster care for mothers who are incarcerated. What makes Jonah’s Journey unique is the ongoing relationship between the caregiver family and the birth mother. For more information, contact 615-686-3250 or visit jonahsjourney.org.
