Resource Fair: Mental wellness (2023)

Meagan Lockhart 0:04
I want to welcome everyone here this afternoon to Colontown’s second Resource Fair. This time it’s going to be on the topic of mental health and wellness. I just hit the record button. So all of the information today will be available on Colontown University. And then we will also have a PDF document available on CTU and within the different neighborhoods on Colontown with the resources from today’s participants, and then some additional resources that we’ve come across for guests that were invited that unfortunately weren’t able to come to the session timing today, but they do have a wealth of information available on their websites and can always be contacted for more information and resources. We have four fantastic speakers with us here today. We have Niya McCray-Brown from Mental Health America, we have Jackie Herigodt from Imerman Angels, Savina Chacheva from Cancer Wellness, and Chelsey Gomez from Oh You’re So Tough. They’re each going to take some time to talk about their programming and the resources available to both cancer patients and caregivers, as well as how you can access those resources. I have found, in my experience within the Colontown community, that when somebody starts discussing mental health, or if they’re having issues with their mental health in their cancer diagnosis and journey, the default response from many individuals is always to seek therapy. However, therapy comes in a vast different types and options and finding the right therapist or right type of therapy that suits your needs can be difficult. And it’s also difficult to find different resources that suit you and will help you on your journey. That said, I would like to introduce our first speaker, Niya McCray-Brown from Mental Health America, to give some information on the mental health programming that they have.

Niya McCray-Brown 2:18
Hi everyone. It’s a real pleasure to be in this space with you and to share space with you around mental health in particular. My name is Niya McCray-Brown, just like Meagan mentioned, and I am the Director of Community Engagement at Mental Health America’s national office. I’m going to share my screen because I have a presentation to share with you all to spot some of the resources that we offer from our national office, but I’ll also be sharing some information about our national affiliates. We have almost 150 affiliates nationwide. So the chances that there’s an MHA near you is high. We are missing, I believe it’s four states out of the 50. So if there’s not an affiliate near you, hopefully we can provide you some support from our national office. Just give me one sec so I can share my screen. Fantastic. Everyone should be able to see that now. Can I get a thumbs up? Okay, yes, we are good to go. Awesome. So Mental Health America is actually the nation’s first mental health advocacy organization. I know you guys might be familiar with others, such as NAMI, or the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, AFSP. A lot of those other organizations are actually born out of the movement that was started in 1909 by Mental Health America. And we focus primarily on mental health advocacy and breaking mental health stigma through the lens of research, public education, and our national affiliate work, where they provide direct services to the community.

Niya McCray-Brown 3:50
This is just a little bit of information about our founder. His name is Clifford Beers. And Clifford Beers is actually an individual who had lived experience of a mental health condition and experienced firsthand a lot of the disparities and just unfortunate oppression that existed in the mental health system of institutionalization in the early 1900’s. He founded our movement by just sharing a really pivotal quote that we like to express in a lot of our work now, which is that he wanted to fight in the open. Unfortunately, so many folks who experience mental health concerns and mental health conditions feel like they have to do so by themselves and they have to do so behind closed doors. And so a big part of our movement is around breaking stigma, and just allowing folks to talk about their mental health openly, and giving them the tools to do so as well.

Niya McCray-Brown 4:39
This is a little bit about our mission statement and some of the lovely staff that I get to work with every day at our national office. Mental Health America advances the mental health and well being of all Americans through direct service, public education, research, advocacy and public policy. We drive progress with the public health perspective through community based solutions and a National agenda. So what that means is that even though we are at the national office, we do a lot of our work and reports to appeal to a wide variety of folks across the Nation. We really aim to meet folks where they’re at in communities that they serve, so that they have tools that they need to impact real change day by day, as well.

Niya McCray-Brown 5:19
This is just a snapshot of Mental Health America and our national office. So we have 143 local affiliates in 39 states. So we’re actually missing 11 states out of the 50. And we have 6.9k staff, including our national office, that serve individuals across the country. This is just a little bit more information about some of the work that we do and I’m going to talk about these programs along the side, more in-depth on future slides.

Niya McCray-Brown 5:48
So one of the biggest things that we do is public education. And this is probably where there’s going to be a lot of takeaways for those of you in the audience today. We do about nine campaigns throughout the year where we focus on providing information to individuals across the country on a variety of mental health topics, different populations, including youth and their parents and caregivers, teachers, coaches. May is Mental Health Month, so that’s usually when we have our largest campaign that’s meant to provide information about mental health basics, Mental Health 101, information about different mental health conditions and strategies that you can use to promote wellbeing and prevention in your mental health regardless of what phase of your journey you are in.

Niya McCray-Brown 6:28
July is BIPOC Mental Health Month. So we do a lot of promotion and campaigns in July around mental health for BIPOC communities and the distinct disparities that exist for those communities, as well as the ways that they thrive despite those disparities. You can see an example of some of these images on the slide right now. And then we also do research reports. So individuals who are really focused on maybe academic implications or political implications of the work that we do, can use our reports to talk to policymakers, professors, different folks in higher education to be able to convey the importance of mental health in their communities as well. We also do webinars. So similar to what you guys are doing right now, Mental Health America does about two to three webinars per month on a variety of categories. We actually have one today. I’m speaking to one of my good colleagues, Jackie, who runs our webinar program. I was like you and I are going to be doing the same thing in just a few moments, which is talking to folks about their mental health. But if you guys are interested, I’ll actually include links to our webinar catalog, if you will, all of the different topics that we’ve covered. But we like to cover a wide variety of information there, including we’ve done some webinars on those with chronic illness, we’ve done some on parenting, we’ve done someone just general goal setting, we typically try to do that around the new year, because everybody’s like new year/new me. And just a variety of resources that we keep in our webinar catalog. But we have so much information. There’s so much information in our toolkits, so much information on our website through articles and blogs. And that’s really a testament of our public education department and all of the hard work that they do there.

Niya McCray-Brown 8:05
Our screening program is also really popular and just like Meagan was mentioning before, mental health is a journey and at Mental Health America, we believe that folks ebb and flow from wellness to sickness throughout their lifetime. There’s not just like those people over there who have a mental health condition. All of us have a mind and therefore all of us have moments of prosperity and thriving, and some of us have moments of suffering. And so our goal is to kind of meet individuals where they are regardless of where they are on that spectrum and be able to provide supports. One of the ways that we do that is through our National Screening and Prevention Program, where we offer 11 unique screenings on a variety of mental health conditions from anxiety, to depression to ADHD. And the screenings are usually pretty quick to take, they take about 10 minutes to complete. They’re anonymous, they are completely confidential, and they’re free. So if you’re ever having a concern, or even if you just would like to kind of check in on your mental health, you can go to the MHA screening program, select a screening, which will also provide links to and I believe there’s going to be a handout with some of that information after today as well. But you can go and take a screening and then after you take it, it’ll give you some information about how you score and you can use that to talk to a primary care provider or family member, a loved one or your therapist if you have contact with one about some of the things that popped up on that screening. And different next steps. We provide a few next steps. So we’ll provide DIY tools, worksheets, different things that you can do to prioritize your mental health based on your results. But if you’d like to use them to kind of find support in your community, you can use your screening results on that as well. Our main goal with offering the screening program is for folks to have autonomy and independence with their screening and to have self awareness about how mental health is showing up in their daily lives. So that they can seek the support that they need either from the results that we offer or in the communities that they exist within.

Niya McCray-Brown 9:58
These are some of the things that our screening is meant to assess. So we like to use very plain language when we’re describing some of the symptoms that might pop up for an individual who’s experiencing a mental health condition. Things like feeling sad, empty, hopeless, or worthless are some of the things that we assess in our screening program, as well as feeling moody or anxious. We don’t like to use a lot of scientific language because we want everyone to feel that they have access to the mental health support that they need and that literacy should not be a barrier to receiving that support. So this is some of the plain language that we use in our screening program and in some of our public education materials as well just to support folks in being able to get connected to the next step of support.

Niya McCray-Brown 10:41
And this is some information that you can use to get in contact with us. If you have a question, if you want to submit some feedback to our national office, you can do so either by phone, or you can get in contact with us online. And then there’s some of our social media handles at the bottom as well. That’s all I’ve got. From what I understand, there’s going to be a question and answer portion later so if anybody has any specific questions about our work or the ways that you can utilize our resources, I’d be happy to answer those questions. And then while the other presenters get going, I’ll drop some specific links into the chat.

Meagan Lockhart 11:20
That’s fantastic. Thank you so much for giving us that information Niya and I’m sure there will be some questions at the end as well. And once you put those links in there, I will add them to our Resource Fair document as well that will be posted for everyone. Thank you. Now we’re going to move on to our second speaker. One of the difficulties that I found during my diagnosis is trying to find a community or trying to manage those feelings of isolation, not fitting in with your peer groups anymore, and items like that. And when I found Colontown, the size of our organization, we have almost 9,500 members now, and then the 150 groups that we have that are so incredibly specialized for different met locations and things like that was fantastic. But sometimes you really just need that person. Finding that one person who has been on a similar path than you, someone you really connect with, someone you know who is available to talk to you, and just share that journey with you. And that is what Jackie and Imerman Angels is doing. They really try and match patients and caregivers with that person who can really help them on that journey. Welcome Jackie and I’m excited with the information you’re going to share with us today.

Jackie Herigodt 12:56
Thank you, I’m super jazzed to be here too. And I think we should hire you potentially for a commercial because that was fabulous. I feel like I don’t even need to present now. But I guess I will. So thank you. I appreciate it. Let me pull up my screen sharing. So I don’t know if everybody or anybody on this presentation has heard of Imerman Angels besides Megan. But I’m gonna give you a little intro on what we do, how we do it, why we do it, and who the heck we are. Imerman Angels basically, just as Meagan so nicely said, we’re a peer-to-peer organization.

Jackie Herigodt 13:43
Our mission is basically we are hoping that in this world, you do not have to go through this cancer experience alone. There’s no reason for it. Because if it’s not us, it’s Colontown. If it’s not Colontown, it’s other organizations that can really help somebody go through the feelings, the diagnosis, everything that goes along with this cancer experience, whether they are going through it as a survivor, fighter, a thriver, a warrior, however, you see yourself a caregiver, a caretaker, a previver. There’s so many elements, so many members in this journey. And we just want to let you know that there’s support out there. You do not have to go through this alone. So our specific mission is to connect cancer fighters, survivors, caregivers, previvors to someone else that’s been there and done that. And it is, just as Meagan said, one-to-one. It’s a different makeup than support groups. Because it is your person. We are super specific about our matches and how we go about it.

Jackie Herigodt 15:07
So this is a little bit about me. I always like to share my why. My hair was much better this day. So I just want to say that my reason for being here is definitely personal, beyond professional. So, last week, I celebrated my 11 year anniversary at Imerman Angels. It’s hard to believe. This year I took on a new role called the Director of Partnerships and Engagement. And why I joined IA is because previous to my experience here, I had lost my mom, my aunt, my grandmother, my uncle, grandfather, all to different cancers. I didn’t know anybody that had gone through that experience of losing so many family members. And it was really scary and isolating in itself to watch these people go through these experiences. And back then, the genetics was not as big of a thing, but you know that when you have your family members being impacted by cancer like that, it just makes sense that you could be potentially hit. So when I heard about Imerman Angels, I thought, oh, goodness, I need to know more, I need to like meet other people that have gone through this. And I actually met Jonny Imerman who is our founder. And that was actually my first survivor. I never even knew that was a thing, because for me, I had only seen people get diagnosed and not make it through to the other side. And so, right away, I was enlightened, I was intrigued, I wanted to get more involved with the organization to learn more, and to know that there was people out there that understood what I had gone through, but also people that were going through this and thriving. And so it was great to meet Imerman Angels. And so I started as a volunteer, and then they couldn’t get rid of me. So here I am, 11 years later. And just so grateful to be able to share this story with you. Fast forward, 2019, my sister was diagnosed with stage IV breast. And then while I was cold capping her got the diagnosis of skin cancer. So again, very personal. Let me fast forward a little bit more, the genetics component definitely comes into play. So 2019, we both went and had genetic testing. My sister got what was called a VUS, a variant of uncertain significance. And fast forward to 2022, they actually updated it and said, she has Lynch Syndrome. So my sister is a carrier of Lynch Syndrome, and so is my nephew. Luckily, I am not. So the genetics come into play. But all that to say that you can see this trajectory and changing of cancer and all of this, and this is why I’m involved with Imerman Angels, and so passionate about it. So basically what we’re doing so that it impacts you, is we can find you somebody in this dark room of cancer. So again, just going back on if you’re thinking you’re the only one that’s been there, done that, don’t, because there’s other people. And we’re really connecting you on someone that we consider a cancer confidant, someone that you can talk to, and share your innermost secrets. You know, sometimes as a survivor, we hear this story all the time, you don’t want to talk to your caregivers about it, because they don’t get it. Sometimes you don’t want to talk to your social worker, sometimes you don’t want to talk to your therapist, sometimes you just want to talk to somebody who understands what you’re going through, because they have internally felt those exact emotions, or hearing it from your doctor is one thing where they’re like, ah, you’re gonna be fine, hearing it from somebody who’s actually gone through it, that changes the whole trajectory in your brain, your perspective says, okay, I see you, I see you 10 years later, I know that I can be there too. And so that’s what we’re able to give you, a mentor Angel. That’s your cancer confidant, so your peer. So this person can be a cancer survivor, a previver, a caregiver. Again, the names get kind of sticky. Some people don’t like these titles, but just for our conversation to make it easier, somebody that’s gone through this, walked the walk so they can talk the talk to somebody else that’s further on down the road. We’ve heard this from some of our mentors, but one of the quotes that I’ll never forget was, Cancer made this gentleman “feel like a victim, but becoming a mentor Angel allowed him to feel like a hero”. And so if you’re in this presentation, if you’re hearing this, if you’re watching this, and you’re like, I want to give back somehow, but I can’t go somewhere, I can’t do it every day, I don’t have that much time, this is a perfect role for you. Because we need you, we need more mentor Angels, we need people to give back. Everybody is unique. But there’s also those carrot, those, those things that kind of thread together. And helping somebody else is something that I cannot describe to you in enough words on the power it gives to you. I look at it as a promotion in your journey. That’s how I look at it. So when you’re thinking like what’s next for me, try to give back in a way. And you’ll see how therapeutic it is for you.

Jackie Herigodt 21:17
So this is how our program works. If you are in fact interested, whether you want to become a mentor Angel and give back or if you’re still looking for support, we actually do both at the same time. If you’re like, Hey, I’ve had this experience, however, I’d like to talk to somebody about this. So I do want to detail that just a bit. So a lot of people think that we connect only on cancer type to cancer type. That is not the case. We are connecting on if somebody wants to participate in a clinical trial and they have a diagnosis with cancer and they just want to talk to somebody else who also participate in a clinical trial. Come to Imerman Angels. We can connect you to someone that’s been there. If you’re a single mom going through cancer, and you want to talk to somebody else who had to deal with children while going through cancer, here we are. If you’re a caregiver, and you’re going through this, and I’ve been told this by caregivers, somebody said to me, Hey, if the cancer didn’t kill them, I was going to because caregivers, they are dealing with a lot sometimes and some of our patients can be a little challenging to deal with. And so the caregivers need an outlet as well. And so we can get you connected to other caregivers. So all of this to say is please think about where you are in your journey. And if you just need that little bit of support. The beauty is you could talk to somebody once or twice and be done. Or you can meet your next best friend, you never know where this will land you. But it’s super easy. You just call us or you go to our website, we get you registered, you do sign up for an appointment, and then you talk to one of our Cancer Support Specialists. And then they ask you these questions and prioritize your needs. And then we also can help navigate you to other resources you might need as well. So we’ll get you connected to a peer, but also hear what else is going on and let you know some other resources that might be out there to be helpful to you as well. So we go ahead and get you connected and then we send you a survey. And we always tell people listen, if you need an additional match, because sometimes your treatment changes or you find that you need additional support and something else you just come back to us and we’ll get you connected to another mentor as well. For becoming a mentor Angel, it is very similar. You’ll go ahead and go to our website and register or call. And don’t worry, we do train our mentor Angels. We always tell you that the bulk of your training is your experience. I can’t train you on that, but definitely can give you some guidelines of what to do, what not to do, those kinds of things. We give you a mentor Angel training video. And we also give you a guide book, and we talk to you about it. And also we give some trainings throughout the year.

Jackie Herigodt 24:10
So these are the stats. Always people are asking about the numbers. So we like to include that we are not just a Chicago organization. A lot of people think of us that way. We are not just a nationwide organization. We are actually global. We are in over 113 countries. We’ve had over 14,000 mentors register with us. And we’ve made over 36,000 connections over all time. So that’s one peer to one mentor, and we’ve connected them. So we did just have our 17th birthday. And our top five cancer types are there as you see. So if you have any more questions about any of these stats, please let me know.

Jackie Herigodt 25:04
But this is a community event we have coming up. As I mentioned, we do have several community events just like this kind of thing throughout the year. Our upcoming one is going to be a very interesting conversation. We decide on what topics we’re going to cover based off of our community’s feedback. And so this one was something that a lot of people were asking for. Imerman Angels is not just this organization that is just matching one person and match another person. That’s not it. We want to make sure that we’re empowering the people that come our way. And so this particular event, I think, will help empower people that are thinking about what is their legacy and how can they go about it because some people feel like they’re not artsy so they can’t like create a beautiful painting or something like that, which could be a legacy project. Some people feel like they are not brilliant, and they can’t write letters. Well, the point is that during this event, we’re going to show so many different ways and give you so many resources to give you that empowerment back to let you feel like you can create a legacy project all your own.

Jackie Herigodt 26:26
Here are some of the organizations that we work with. So this is just to give you an idea. So basically, these organizations have said, Imerman Angels is doing this peer-to-peer, I don’t want to recreate the wheel, you guys do it. So they’ve come to us, and they’ve said, please match our people for us. And we’re grateful for it. So we definitely have a variety, these are just some of them, the screen is only so big. So I just wanted to give you an idea of the variety of organizations that we partner with. So if anybody’s watching and they want to partner with us, there’s an opportunity there for you.

Jackie Herigodt 27:07
So other resources that are available to you, you can go to this link on our website, very simple, but we put together a grief toolkit and definitely get good feedback on it. Everybody that is impacted by cancer grieves, whether they lost someone or something. Cancer definitely impacts everybody. And you can grieve with what was or what isn’t. And this tool will help you through that. We have other cancer resources like a journal and family building resources and a guide that we put out frequently. So you please feel free to reference our website for that as well.

Jackie Herigodt 27:49
And then this is just our contact information. And if you use that QR code, it takes you over to becoming a mentor. But you can definitely navigate through our website after that. So I give you all thanks, and especially Colontown for reaching out, available for questions. Thanks so much.

Meagan Lockhart 28:15
Thank you so much, Jackie. That’s fantastic. And it’s awesome that you guys are also working with Bright Spot Network. They were part of our first Resource Fair on the topic of parenting. So that’s fantastic. And I’ll be sure to put that in our notes to put in our events calendar as well for our members to check out.

Jackie Herigodt 28:38
Thank you.

Meagan Lockhart 28:40
Now, on to our next speaker. When we were looking at planning the Mental Health Resource Fair, we were originally focused solely on mental health. But as we started doing research, and started looking at the topics more closely, we really found that a person’s wellbeing is not just part of their mental health, but your mental, psychosocial and physical well being. And it all comes together to give you that full mental health picture, which is why we broadened our focus to be more encompassing for the wellness aspect as well. So I’m excited to welcome Savina from Cancer Wellness. It’s an organization based in Illinois, but they do have a number of virtual options available to member so I’m excited to hear more. Welcome to Savina.

Savina Chacheva 29:42
Thank you so much for the warm welcome Meagan and Colontown for having us today. I’m excited to meet everyone here and share more about the center and the services that we have available. As Meagan mentioned, we are located in Illinois, however, and largely because of the pandemic, we were able to expand and reach more people through our virtual offerings on Zoom.

Savina Chacheva 30:05
So I will share my screen and just kind of give you a little bit of an overview regarding the Cancer Wellness Center. The Cancer Wellness Center was founded in 1989. We were a small organization initially focused on doing a hotline and a couple of different support groups and wellness offerings. Since, in the last 34 years, we’ve grown significantly and offer now a wide variety of services, which I will get into further in my presentation, but we serve about 1,400 people each year. And that includes both those diagnosed with cancer, their loved ones, and then anyone who’s lost somebody to cancer as well. Everything that we do and that I will talk about is free of charge. And we make that happen because of the generosity that we have of individual donors, corporations, foundations who support the work that we do at the center.

Speaker 1 31:09
So who we serve, as I mentioned, we do not provide services just for the cancer patient. We serve anyone impacted. So that means those that are diagnosed, and that is at any point in diagnosis, whether they’re newly diagnosed, in treatment, with a recurrence, or if they have completed treatment. We provide services to both adults and children. So we do have a child life specialist on staff, and a child psychologists on staff who can work with kids who either have a cancer diagnosis, or have a parent or a loved one with a cancer diagnosis as well. And then as I did mention, unfortunately, there is grief in the cancer experience. We do provide support for those grieving the loss of a loved one. The majority of our staff speaks English, we do have two Spanish speaking therapists as well, and have just recently added Romanian and Russian to our list as well. As I mentioned, we have a wide range of services that we do at the center. My focus as the Program Director is the nonclinical services. So I focus really on the education and wellness at the center. For education programs, those are ones that you can easily access from anywhere, a lot of them right now are virtually offered through Zoom. We do have a program tonight on cancer and pain and managing pain. So if you’re interested, I’ll put that in the chat here. The mental health piece that Meagan invited us for and kind of what we do and where most people come to us because of is the counseling and support groups. As I mentioned, there is a wide range in who we serve, and how we support the families. In addition to doing counseling, we have support groups. And those are divided by men’s, women’s, we have co-ed, young women’s, we’re recruiting for a young men’s group, young adults, which is also a co-ed so anybody between the ages of 20 to 40. There’s not a strict cut off, it depends on kind of where they are in their life stages, significant others so for those who are caring for a loved one, we do have a pediatric group as well and then parenting with cancer. A lot of the groups that we bring to the center are based on demand. So if we do find that there is a need for any other groups, we will add as needed. So if there’s something you don’t see on here that you’re like, you know, I’m curious Savina if you guys are offering something on young adults who are caregivers, we’ve done that. We don’t at the moment, but feel free to reach out to us and we can always put you on a waiting list as we’re growing groups too. And then as I mentioned, part of my job is the wellness services at the center too which includes stress reduction, yoga, exercise, weight loss, mindfulness. I kind of lump in nutrition in there too. And then we do have a wig salon at the center. That is only in here in Northbrook in Illinois, for people that have lost their hair due to treatment. As I mentioned, the wellness and education can be accessed virtually. We do have many of them also recorded and can be viewed afterwards on YouTube. So if there’s a topic that you’re interested in, I’ll share our YouTube channel with Meagan who can provide it as a resource after if there’s a topic you’re interested in that maybe you missed. We do record and publish many, many of them. The counseling and the support groups we’ve expanded. We do have some therapists that can provide services in different states.

Savina Chacheva 34:53
I kind of have the full list on here for you. That is limited as most of our staff is Illinois based but we do have that offering right now. And so how do we make all that happen? It’s our community. We have many volunteers who deliver classes, lectures, and support the center in that way too, and they give up their time. We train graduate students in counseling. So our clinical work is professional, trained therapists. And then we do provide additional training for students so that we could really grow that niche population in doing counseling for the cancer community. We fundraise in order to, as I said, support our programs. So in addition to having individuals who donate to us, corporations, and grants, we do have fundraising events throughout the year. We have four major ones. We have actually our big annual benefit coming up in two weeks. We also are supported by our Board of Directors and our Associate Board.

Savina Chacheva 36:11
I just wanted to share with you, this is feedback that we get from our clinical services. So from that mental health perspective that we do. A lot of people who utilize our services find a lot of benefit in reducing their stress, managing and understanding their cancer experience, increase their social support, improve communication with their support system, so whether that’s with their caregivers, or even their healthcare providers, we empower people to seek that support for themselves and ask questions and have that guidance from us.

Savina Chacheva 36:49
And how do you get connected? I have a QR code here that links to our website. I’ll also put the website in the chat. And then I have a picture here of our Intake Coordinator, Alana Lebovitz. Alana works Monday through Friday, and she usually gets back to people within a business day to do a short intake and then refer them to programs and services. Thank you so much. As everybody, I answer questions at the end? Thank you.

Meagan Lockhart 37:24
Thank you so much, Savina it’s amazing the broad aspects that Cancer Wellness Center is able to host and I really think that the services you provide both in person in Illinois and virtually are fantastic and hope that some folks are able to access those. And now last, but not least, we have Chelsey Gomez here with us. And one thing that I think is the reason I put her last is she really takes a number of these different aspects to mental health and wellness and puts them together. So she specializes and has a Instagram community of Oh, You’re So Tough. She is an artist and used art to get through her own cancer diagnoses. And has now turned that into a thriving community for cancer patients to not only share their stories, but to really break down the social barrier barriers and stigma related to cancer and the cancer journey that patients go through. So welcome, Chelsea. And I can’t wait for you to give us a bit more information about what you do.

Chelsey Gomez 38:42
Hi, everyone. So my presentation is going to be a little bit less formal. But I’m not an organization. But I am just a human who had cancer who thought we could probably do a little bit better in supporting people. So a little bit of background is I had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma two times and I went through a stem cell transplant in the middle of the pandemic. Literally when Florida was completely shut down, I was in the hospital getting my new cells. So when I returned home, I had to take my young daughter out of school because I couldn’t get sick and we were just home together. My husband, my daughter and I was just trying to recover. So as a form of coping with all the trauma that I had experienced in the last two years, I just made a decision one day to go buy an Apple Pencil and downloaded an app called Procreate. And I just started drawing about the way that I actually felt about cancer. And so much of my cancer experience had been trying to live up to what everyone else tells me I should be, so strong, brave, a warrior, a fighter. I just never related to those things. I always just felt scared and kind of out of control and sad and nobody was really, at the time, talking about those things openly on the internet. So I just took a risk and kind of put myself out there and started sharing these drawings. I started sharing some very vulnerable YouTube videos about the stem cell transplant process and how I was feeling. And instead of being met with what I thought would be like, What are you doing girl, it was like, Hey, we feel like this too. And slowly but surely over the last, close to three years, it’s hard to believe, but close to three years, I’ve been able to garner community on Instagram of very like minded people who are just truly a supportive community within themselves. Like, if you go to my page on Instagram, you can see there are people commenting back and forth all the time supporting each other. And in a very less formal way, I do connect people every other Friday. I do a little thing where people want to become friends. And I just kind of give some very brief overview of them, and then connect people because what I was seeing in my DMs was there were people who needed support, and they would be awesome friends, like, maybe you love rock music, and this one loves rock music and you both have cats. I was like, yes, you should be friends. So I do all of that. Also, I have developed my own brand, which is nontraditional cancer products I sell through Etsy. They are all humorous, because that’s how I feel like dealing with such a sad topic as cancer. That’s a way that we can kind of do it together. Because if not laugh, I guess we are just gonna have to cry. So I’d rather just laugh most of the time. And if you go to my page, you’ll see that it mainly reads as like a diary into my feelings about cancer. But you also read where people go, Hey, are you reading my diary? Are you in my head? And it’s like, no, I’m not. But I am at the same time because our experiences are so intertwined. And we don’t talk about them enough. So we feel isolated. So I think having a safe place to do that is important. Another project I started, which anybody listening is free to submit to is I have a twice weekly art project where I illustrate anonymous submissions from the cancer community. It can be from caregivers, patients, whatever. And it gives them a safe place to talk about these experiences that they’ve had and see them somewhere and maybe share them but people don’t know they’re from them. I keep everything confidential and safe. A couple of things that I do out in the community is I really believe in uplifting existing resources. So I have a big resource guide that I have put together on my page and I always share. So if there are events like this, or whatever I’m like, don’t need to reinvent the wheel, we have these resources, and I help get them to the people you’re trying to reach. And I think that’s really important. I was also fortunate enough to start a young adult art club, and that is in partnership with Gilda’s Club Madison and Gilda’s Club Middle Tennessee. And we have been doing it for close to a year and a half now. And our last workshop filled up within 24 hours, and our waiting list was filled within 24 hours. So if anyone out there is listening and wants to partner with our club, please hit me up because we think that it’s a really, really amazing program. And the sense of community and vulnerability and fun that we have is really awesome. Like we had a Taylor Swift lyric workshop, we had a cookie decorating and next month we’re having a thrifted picture ghost painting one if you’ve seen that all over the internet. So I really believe in bringing new ideas and new concepts. And I also believe in meeting people where they are, they’re already on social media. So I know that a lot of times people want to get people off of social media onto another app. Well, sometimes it’s important to meet them where they are, and they’re already there looking for you. And so you just kind of have to know where to look. Just a few more things I want to mention is I also volunteer with Bright Spot. I’m on their parent board. I’m really passionate about their organization. And they give away a few of my books that I wrote for children about cancer, because I saw with my own young daughter that there wasn’t enough out there that wasn’t scary. Like I just never really wanted to say, chemotherapy or all those terms that I don’t even want to hear and a kid cannot have any concept of. So I think that is important. And I’m also excited that I have began working with a lot of different research studies. So probably on the backend you guys don’t know, but I have been working on them and kind of seeing how can we leverage social media to better inform mental health, better inform people on even medical issues, like make sure we’re not having misinformation being spread. And I’m really excited. I’ve also been able to redesign some research materials recently, because I know how it is to be handed that book that is just like the scariest stuff you’ve ever read. And so I’m like, hey, if we can just make it a little less scary and a little more rainbows and glitter and make it a little bit more easier to digest, I think that’s really important. So I’ll stop talking now. But I’m happy to answer any questions. And I appreciate you having me here, even though I’m not like a big org or anything, but I am here in the community, really doing some grassroots things to try to make everything better for people.

Meagan Lockhart 45:17
Thank you so much, Chelsea. And thank you for joining us here today. I think it’s important and I think when we were creating this Resource Fair to really touch on the different aspects and the different forms that mental health support can come from. So I know Chelsea’s work specifically get shared often in our early onset neighborhoods. So for individuals who are diagnosed under the age of 50, most are under 40. Because it’s relatable. It really breaks down those barriers of isolation and intimidation that people have when facing this diagnosis. And knowing that you’re not alone can come in a wide array of forms. And I think it’s really helpful and really important to give our members here within Colontown. choices and resources where they can choose what fits best for them, and how they can find support in any of those ways, whether it’s within the Colontown communities, or whether it’s with traditional therapy or social work, finding your one person and all just different types of wellness and mental health support. So thank you to all four of our speakers today. The information you’ve provided is fantastic. And this evening, I will put the additional links in our Resource Fair document. And if anyone has any questions, I’m just scrolling up the chat now to see if there have been any dropped in, please ask away and we will field those to the representatives here today.

Meagan Lockhart 47:19
And then, to the speakers we’ve had today. If you would like your contact information placed within that Resource Fair document, please let me know. I can add that in as well. I saw that Savina, you put your information here in the chat. It’s perfect. It’s great. Thank you.

Meagan Lockhart 47:50
I actually don’t see any questions. Jen, please feel free to let me know if I’ve missed anything. But if any members are looking at this later, or feel intimidated and don’t want to ask publicly right now, please feel free to send me or Jen a message and we can field those to the representatives that we’ve had today. And I just want to thank you so much for joining us this afternoon.