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Date: 9/13/2022
THREE RIVERS – Mia Griffin lost her mother to substance use 10 years ago. Since then, she has made it her mission to spread awareness and educate on substance use and help others in recovery. Griffin is now hosting the first Sober in the Park event on Sept. 24 from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Hryniewicz Park.
Griffin has her master’s in social work and currently works in the Opioid Treatment Program at Behavioral Health Network. She moved to Palmer a year ago and said she noticed a lack of services for those in recovery.
“I realized that we don’t have that many services out here for people in recovery. We only have a handful of NA meetings, we have a good amount of AA meetings, but I just felt that there aren’t a lot of things for people in recovery. Even to just get together and meet each other and have a safe place to go,” said Griffin.
Griffin decided to put together the Sober in the Park event during National Recovery Month to create this supportive space.
“With something like this, I’m hoping it makes it more okay for people to be in recovery and okay for people to come out and celebrate. I’m just hoping it brings people together,” said Griffin.
The event will have about 25 vendor booths run by people in or related to recovery. There will be music, spoken word and poetry performances.
There will also be a food truck, desserts, lawn games, face painting for kids, crafts, educational resources and a “Recovery Rocks” activity where people will be able to decorate a rock with paint, glitter or stickers and take it home for free.
“The thought is that this will be something that can help them in their journey whether they be in recovery or not in recovery, but art is a way of expressing yourself. I also have a close relation to art so I wanted to include that,” said Griffin.
The event will conclude with a send-off of paper lanterns to honor those lost to addiction.
Griffin is funding the event on her own and has set up a GoFundMe for donations. All proceeds will go toward event costs.
She hopes that the event will spread awareness and reduce stigmas around substance use.
“I hope that it brings some more awareness to substance use and, hopefully, reduces some stigma that still carries on every day,” she said. “Addiction really is a family disease, and we need to let people know that it’s the kids that are affected that aren’t using substances and it’s the aunts, the uncles and everybody is somehow affected by it. We all know somebody.”
Griffin said that she hopes this will become a yearly event.
“I absolutely love meeting people in recovery. I love hearing their stories, I love sharing my story. For me, being a kid with a parent in active addiction, we were never allowed to talk about it. Nobody knew what was going on. My lifetime goal is to create my nonprofit in honor of my mother and my goal is to make this an annual event to create funding for that nonprofit,” she said.
Those interested in learning more about the event can visit https://www.facebook.com/events/801959944577449. GoFundMe donations are being accepted at https://gofund.me/aaebbc49.