For the third year, the Empower2Recover Foundation made its way to Saskatoon to share education and lived experiences regarding mental health and addiction issues with the community. “What I’ve noticed in my 18-plus years in recovery is that a lot of people don’t understand this trauma, mental health, addiction recovery world. So, it’s really just educating people on what it is and having hope and love and kindness and compassion at a time that we really need it,” Jay Barnard, the founder and executive director of the Empower2Recover Foundation, said. “Battle for Recovery 3” was organized to take place on World Mental Health Day. The day-long event featured a variety of speakers who shared their lived experiences with mental health and addiction struggles. “When somebody shares their experience of overcoming their troubles or their battles with addictions, it’s medicine. It’s medicine for other people to listen to that. And to help them and offer them better direction, guidance, some support,” Christopher Merasty, the CEO of New Directions Consulting and a guest speaker, said. For the three years that the event has been hosted in Saskatoon, Hard Knock Talks has been a key partner in facilitating the workshop, speakers and community outreach aspects. “A lot of our speakers are people who’ve lived experience, who share what works for them. We have people talking about their roads to recovery and how they ended up in the circumstances that they did,” Daniel Hearn, the creator and producer of Hard Knocks Talks, said. In addition to his work on the Hard Knocks Talks podcast, which shares stories and education related to substance use and mental health, Hearn and his wife have created an important resource for parents. “We designed a parenting workshop based around our lived experience with substance use. Use with ministry involvement and with recovery and finding our way back to trust together to raise our families,” Hearn said. “Parenting in the Storm” is a workshop that helps parents, co-parents and caregivers improve communication skills. “August of last year, we did our first one. And as soon as it hit Facebook, it took off. We visited 29 different communities, 29 different two-day workshops in that past year,” Hearn said. This resource was one of many that were highlighted during the event. In addition to speakers and education, various local outreach groups had information tables available for attendees. One of those tables belonged to the event’s community sponsor, Crocus Cooperative. “It lets people know they don’t have to be alone and that there’s help out there and there’s organizations that want to walk alongside them in their journeys,” Corinne Anthony, the executive director of Crocus Cooperative, said. “And it’s an opportunity to build relationships with our community organizations. So there’s a lot of people here in recovery, a lot of people seeking recovery. They’ll start to see these faces around these rooms, and then they’ll [think] ‘Oh, I know where maybe she can help. Or I know him, he does this thing that I wanted to talk to him about,’” Hearn said. This event at Station 20 West marked the 44th one of its kind hosted throughout Canada. Barnard shared hope that attendees were able to leave with a better understanding of how trauma and mental health struggles can impact everyone differently. “It just goes back to education. The stigma needs to be broken. Everybody has their own recovery. We can’t put everybody inside a box and say like, they’re going to get recovery this way....there’s a whole bunch of things in life today that are contributing to why people are struggling. So it’s not just one thing,” Barnard said. Over the noon hour, the event shared a pizza lunch with those outside in need of a hot meal. The lunch was also an opportunity to hand out winter clothing to unhoused people in the area.
