Singing for Teacakes

With her joyful eyes and generous smile, Donna Dozier-Spears does not look sixty-four. Nor does she look like a former drug addict- a woman who once felt powerless to defeat the problem that plagued her. But Donna was never really powerless at all. Just the opposite. She was a tour de force waiting to happen, a creative and loving spirit gifted with the muses of singing and dancing and acting and cooking. All it took to manifest her gifts to the world was a safe and loving place to nurture them into being; a place to help her get clean, take root and thrive. Enter Thistle Farms. First, with its Magdalene residential program followed by meaningful employment at The Cafe, Donna has found her perfect stage, becoming a powerful actor in the lives of others and uplifting the spirits of all around.

Now a manager, Donna oversees the food production in the basement kitchen. It is work not done quietly. Music -- everything from gospel to Sinatra to the Doobie Brothers -- fills the space as Donna dances her delectable tea cakes into being for the patrons upstairs.

“When you sing and dance with the food,” she says, her mellifluous voice rising over the music (Bette Midler was on), “you give the food good spirit. You give the food life. People can taste it.”

People at Thistle Farms certainly taste her chicken pot pie. “I was lying in the bed and the idea for a pot pie came dancing across my tongue,” Donna recalls. “I rushed to work at 5:00 a.m. and started mixing and making it.” Mission accomplished. Donna’s pot pie is now the cafe’s number one seller.

But Donna doesn’t just dance and sing while she’s preparing the food in the basement kitchen. She also dances and sings with her friends at work -- “our sisterhood”, as she calls it -- and with the patrons, especially when it’s their birthdays. Part song, part performance art, and pure celebration, Donna and her Thistle Farms’ sisterhood bring the house down regularly for birthday requests.