- by Melanie Knapp

It hasn’t been sweat and tears, but joys and triumphs! Some residents of Owen Sound have been gathering at Community Connections over the last six months to put together a poetry book celebrating the new Crisis Recovery Room at the GBHS hospital. The book is generously supported by Community Connections and the GBHS hospital.

The poems are generally about different people and their recovery. We look to bring hope to people using mental health services and programs especially in Grey and Bruce. The group has gathered to collectively put together a book that represents some of the joys and triumphs of mental health. It also mentions the courage of coping with the struggle of mental health issues. There are ups as well as downs!

It has been wonderful to hear the excited chatter of participants as they prepare the book. Some people are publishing poems for the first time while others have been published many times. People are including their original art-work with some of the poems.

We have had to make decisions about titles, where the book will be distributed, welcome and dedication pages as well as acknowledgements and the cover design. It was pretty good to see the group come together with amazing team-work as they created the poetry book.

Copies of the book will be given to all contributors, to the hospital and to different places around town to have available for people in the community to read. The poetry really does portray the message that ‘Recovery Starts Now’ as there are many healing poems in this work of artistic efforts.

This is a positive example of community members coming together to make lemonade out of lemons. We all need a silver-lining some days. Thanks to all involved, and to those who will look for copies around town and enjoy reading poetry about healing and recovery.