Theresa Thames

Motherhood was instantaneous and unexpected for pastor and theologian Theresa S. Thames; when her sister passed away in November 2011 on Thames’ 32nd birthday, she decided to raise her nephew as her own. But while she was adjusting to her new life as “TT Mommie,” an affectionately given nickname to describe her new role, Thames was hit again and again with two more tragedies.

She tells mater mea how she found her way as a grieving and newly single working mom.

Pastor and theology scholar Theresa S. Thames, 35, isn’t your typical mother, and as such, doesn’t have a typical name.

Instead of momma, mommy, or mom, her 12-year-old son Delmost White calls her “TT Mommie,” a bittersweet name borne from a family tragedy.

“My sister [Portia] was eight years older than me when she died,” Theresa Thames explains. “He’s the only baby in my immediate family who was born after me. Growing up he called me ‘Pretty Auntie,’ because that’s what I told him my name was. So when my sister died of cryptococcal meningitis, it became [TT Mommie]. I am his TiTi, but I’m also his mom.”

Becoming the mother of a grief-stricken child and providing a better future for him is, in some ways, an extension of her life-long duty to serve her community—and an unconscious nod back to her own experience growing up in the South.

Life on the coast of Biloxi, Mississippi wasn’t always great for Theresa Thames as a young girl; she was raised by her grandmother and their church community because of her mother’s drug addiction.

“When my mom was too high to show up for things or when we didn’t have money for bills, my church and my community supported me,” Thames says now.

“The community raised me. The church gave me a place and affirmed my gift for public speaking [and] education [when I was] very young.” (Theresa Thames and her mother, who has now been clean for over 20 years, have since developed a mutually loving and supportive relationship.)

Those early affirmations may explain why Theresa Thames was always different from other kids. At 14, while other girls were nurturing obsessions with their looks, popularity, and boys, Thames was declaring her desire to become a pastor. It was an unheard of dream for that time and place, but one she wouldn’t let go of after feeling called to service.

However there weren’t many women pastors Thames could look up to, so she shifted gears and decided to study biology. She was accepted into Howard University in Washington, D.C. on a biochemistry scholarship, but quickly realized that she didn’t want to become a scientist, and switched her major to human communications studies.

Yet her teenage dreams of ministering were inescapable; despite not knowing what being a woman minister would look like, Thames went to Duke Divinity School after graduating from Howard to study religion with an emphasis in Hebrew and Old Testament Bible. She also discovered a woman-positive form of theology that she hadn’t experienced in her childhood church back in Mississippi.

Theresa Thames began to define what it meant to her to be a Black woman and a pastor: She co-developed the divinity school’s gender studies program, headed the women’s center, and served as a chaplain at Duke University Hospital for a year. She was developing her own brand of theology, one that’s centered on honesty and authenticity.

“Honest about my own story, about my own struggles… [I’m] just being very real with people because that’s what people want,” she explains.

“They don’t want a pie-in-the-sky theology; they want [something] tangible. In my ministry and in my life, it’s about me being transparent and authentic. Being transparent keeps me honest, it keeps me real, and it keeps me humble because, ‘There by the Grace of God go I.’”

She was also preparing to build a life with a man she met her sophomore year at Howard University. The two dated on and off during grad school, but eventually decided to stay together. In June 2007, Thames moved back to D.C. to make history as one of the first black women pastors at Foundry United Methodist Church. Two months later she and her husband were married, and focused on furthering their respective careers.

And in fact, over the course of her eight-year tenure at Foundry, her prodigious professional accomplishments soared. But, Theresa Thames says now, the dynamic her success created would ultimately lead to the undoing of her marriage.

“I was winning and successful, but we were failing and uncoupling,” Thames admits now.

In February 2011 they began the divorce process, and by May they were officially separated.

Three months later, she received the news of her sister’s untimely death and her orphaned nephew. Theresa Thames made the decision to bring Delmost from Mississippi to D.C. to live with her. (Delmost’s father was unable to take him in.)

“It was not a difficult decision for me to take him,” Thames says now, “but I had no idea how I would make life work as a single parent literally 1,000 miles away from my family. However, him remaining in Mississippi was not an option. I wanted him to have a full and healthy life, a life that would expose him to the world. I had no doubt that he would be loved and cared for in Mississippi by our family, but I also knew that their care of him would be limited.”

Though Theresa Thames doesn’t regret becoming TT Mommie, uprooting Delmost also meant making major changes in her life as well; she took six weeks of adoption leave from work to try and learn what life would look like for them as a new mom and son.

“Honestly, when he first came, I don’t know who cried more: me or him,” she says.

“He was sad and depressed; I was sad and overwhelmed. I was in the middle of a messy divorce and grieving, raising this child, and trying to do my job.”

To keep sane, Theresa Thames leaned on her church and friends for support.

“I built the village and family that I needed,” she says now. “Those first few months were hard. There were a lot of tears from the both of us. He desperately missed being close to family, especially my mother, and I was overwhelmed with parenthood. I had to find a school, a pediatrician, and a barber. I had my first breakdown in the school uniform store because I had no idea how to buy pants for a boy.”

It was an incredibly emotional time for the new family, one that would only get harder: in April 2013, almost a year after their divorce was finalized, Thames got a phone call from her best friend while waiting at the pediatrician’s office. Her ex-husband was found dead. Ten months later, she learned of her father’s death.

“There was just this layer of grief and sadness,” she says. “Navigating that grief, in the midst of the everyday demands of life took a lot of time, yet no real journey is ever swift.”

Despite the great losses both Delmost and Theresa Thames have experienced, the pair have soldiered on together. They’ve found their groove as mother and son, and their days aren’t as teary as their first few months together were. Delmost has settled into his new home and Thames has continued on the path she set for herself when she was 14: in July she became the senior pastor at Cheverly United Methodist Church in Cheverly, Maryland and she’s in the midst of a doctorate program in leadership excellence at Wesley Theological Seminary.

“It now doesn’t feel as awkward,” Thames says of her role as a single, working mom. “This [past] July will be three years that he’s been with me. He’ll be 13 this year. This relationship is growing and flourishing, [and] yes, I’m TT Mommie.”