Dear Editor,
September is “back to school” season, back to fall schedules and, for many, back to our community after a busy summer. On Thursday, September 5th, I hope to see hundreds in town back to the Community Addiction Awareness Vigil – the third annual event that has gathered an ever-growing group each year.
Since its inception, I’ve witnessed a growing swell of support for the event and—more importantly—for each other. Expect to leave the event inspired, motivated, and proud of our community. There’s much work to be done to grow awareness, resources, and support for anyone facing a mental health or substance misuse challenge. But the reality is that we are a community that should be rich in the relationships, connection, and compassion that help solve this crisis.
The New Canaan Community Foundation is proud to partner with the New Canaan Parent Support Group to again co-host this important event. The foundation serves as a source of advice, local leadership, and facilitates charitable giving. People give through and alongside us on a wide variety of issues that they’re passionate about—the arts, environment, education, human services, the list goes on. But we are also responsive to the particular issues that need extra attention and, in that effort, we are partnering with others across town to support the health and wellness of our community.
We hope to see you Thursday, September 5th from 7-8:15 PM in downtown New Canaan (corner of South & Elm). Similar to last year, this event will include live music (starting at 6PM), resources, hopeful testimonials, and a candlelight vigil led by members of the local clergy. For more information, visit the event’s Facebook page: http://bit.ly/AddictionAwarenessVigil or http://ncparentsupportgroup.org/.
Sincerely,
Lauren Patterson
President & CEO
New Canaan Community Foundation
As foster parents, we cared for a number of children who struggled with a variety of issues including addiction. We later adopted three of them, two brothers and a sister from the same family who had been removed because of their parents’ extensive, long term drug use. As their new parents, we helped them with their own substance use and other struggles and we needed all the help and support we could get. We can happily report, they are now all successful adults with families of their own. Now as always, we will do all we can, in whatever capacity we can, to support the New Canaan Parent Support Group and all of our friends and neighbors across New Canaan who are dealing with addiction and recovery.