Recovery Fest celebrates healing
A common theme at the Grapevine Center’s 11th annual Recovery Fest was the idea of celebrating everybody’s individual healing journey.
“This is great, we love it,” Dee Fields with the Grapevine Center said. “The events with people coming together, they help people recover. It’s very important, seeing that connection with each other, celebrating our own journeys.”
The event, hosted at the Grapevine Center’s office on North Elm Street Thursday, July 24, brought Butler residents together to celebrate wellness and recovery with each other through yoga and meditation, encouraging activities like gardening and nutrition, along with games, music, food and therapy dogs.
At Recovery Fest, religious organizations, charities and other groups had tents to offer support to those in recovery from mental health issues, drug addiction and other ailments.
One of those people, Christine Breakstone, with a group called Self Advocates United as 1, said her group’s self-described goal is to promote and support self-advocacy and the rights of people with disabilities.
Breakstone said she’s struggled with mental health issues and eating disorders for a significant parts of her life, while one of her daughters suffered a traumatic brain injury in the past. She said in both cases, support from others was one of the biggest aids in their healing processes.
“At the end of the day, a reason why people recover, and they go through significant healing, is because they got the support they needed. They had connections in their lives that allowed them to become more resilient, because we know even one person who cares can make a big difference,” Breakstone said.
Rita Lane, who’s involvement with the Grapevine Center dates back 20 years, said her sister-in-law has paranoid schizophrenia and has spent a lot of time in a state hospital. The Grapevine Center was like home to her, she said.
Lane helped created Recovery Fest to give those in recovery from mental health issues, disabilities and other battles a day to celebrate themselves and their peers.
“This type of thing is wonderful. If you walk around and talk to other people who are in some type of recovery and all the vendors who are supportive. Everybody has been so amazing,” Lane said. “We started this years ago and this was the idea: A day to celebrate recovery — no goals, no paperwork, none of the usual stuff you deal with the other 364 days of the year. You just come here and celebrate your recovery and your wellness.”
Leonard Sunday, a peer support specialist with the Grapevine Center, is a former U.S. Marine who has struggled with PTSD and alcoholism. He told guests about how recovery “doesn’t happen in one shape or size,” and a welcoming environment makes all the difference.
“In addition to helping people celebrate their recovery, it is also generating awareness of these issues,” Sunday said. “When we have these events, it allows providers to collaborate, it allows members of the community who are in recovery to come down here and be exposed to providers and be in a welcoming environment, and talk about their recovery, feel good about it. There’s no judgment, no stigma.”
Encouraging healthy eating, exercise and meditation were other areas Fields said the organization was trying to promote at the event, saying things in one’s own power are important to recovery.
“Of all the people we have here — people deal with mental health, people deal with drugs and alcohol, we have homeless people, maybe there’s people who are low-income and are just in need — we have all these vendors here to talk about housing, careers, occupational and vocational rehab for people. It’s wonderful.”
