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Last week in LA’s San Fernando Valley, where 95% of the world’s legal porn is made or distributed, Jay and I met a wonderful woman named Harmony.  Harmony used to be a stripper and now runs Treasures, an organization that comes alongside women to help them discover their worth and purpose in an industry that leaves so many empty.

Recently Harmony joined up with Crissy, an ex-porn star, and Bronwen, an ex-prostitute, to launch a short film series called X-Girls. In it, these three women answer questions about life in and after the sex industry.  (Note: I usually use the word “prostituted” instead of “prostitute,” but for this post I will let it reflect the series).

How did the three of you meet?

I met Crissy soon after she made the bold decision to walk away from porn. At that point, she was still under contract and had already signed away the rights to the content her website was using. She was making at least $15,000 a month in residual income from her website alone. After unsuccessfully trying to get them to take the site down, they asked her where they should continue to send her checks. She told them she didn’t want any money from them and decided to never take another dime from that industry. She has been courageous since the beginning and has always had a heart to use her story to inspire others. It has been an honor to be her mentor for the past 6 years.

As for Bronwen, I was in Australia at a conference and met someone who knew Bronwen. She was determined to connect us, saying “I met someone just like you! You have to meet her!”  I hear that from time to time, but in this case, it was true. In Bronwen I found a kindred friend. It’s like our heart beats to the same drum. The fact that we live on opposite sides of the globe hasn’t stood in the way of our friendship thanks to Skype and airplanes! She has become like a sister to me.

Why did you create this series, and why now?

The strategy of Treasures has always been to reach locally and think globally. That is why we have offered Sex Industry Outreach Trainings for leaders interested in developing sex industry outreaches in their communities for the past 7 years. My desire is to see an outreach happening in every major city across the globe. So far we are up to 60 cities with Treasures-trained outreaches!

At the same time, given that there are more women in the sex industry than any other time in history, there are thousands upon thousands of women who don’t have local support. This became especially clear to us when we were featured in Glamour Magazine. We were so inundated with calls and emails from women around the world looking for help that it crashed our website, email and phone lines!

Since then, we have always been thinking about strategies that would help us reach and serve these women. When we started offering workshops for the women here in LA, a light bulb went on. I realized that if we could create something web-based on the same topics we were developing workshops for, we could reach a much broader audience. Because we believe that story is so powerful, I thought who better to be a voice in this than women who have “been there”. In order to capture a wider range of experiences, I thought it would be a good idea to get a couple of friends together who had worked in different areas of the sex industry. And that is how the idea of X Girls was birthed An x-stripper, x-porn star and an x-prostitute answering questions about the impact of the sex industry and life after sex work.

What has the response been so far?

My hope for X Girls is that not only will it reach women who don’t have the benefit of local support, but it will also be used by sex industry outreaches to facilitate support groups in their communities. To help with that we are developing a curriculum that will be released in March, 2013.

So far, the response to X Girls has been awesome! I am so thrilled to have this tool available and am really believing that it will bring breakthrough to our viewers. In just two weeks we have already had over 4,700 views. I believe that this is just the beginning!

You can watch the rest of episode 1, which includes Crissy’s and Bronwen’s stories, as well as episode 2, in which the X Girls talk about “getting out and staying out” here.

Episode 3 coming soon!

If you know someone in the sex industry, or others who would be interested or encouraged by the X-Girls series, please spread the word.

For more on Treasures, you can check out their website.  Harmony has also written a book called Scars and Stillettos, which is currently sitting on my night table as my next read!

Harmony, thank you for your incredible courage, your contagious joy, and your passion to love others as you are loved.