Conversations Cafe: PAWS to COPE

The Conversations Cafe is a monthly event at Sip of Hope Coffee Bar, featuring education and open forum dialogue on the intersections of Mental Health within our communities. This education event is brought to you by Hope For The Day, with support from our partners in prevention, Banyan Treatment Center, Dark Matter Coffee, and Three Run Two.

This week's live Conversations Cafe episode is titled “PAWS to COPE - The Power of Pets”, and is filled with discussion & education on Therapy Animals, Emotional Support Animals, and Service Animals, no matter whether they are furry, feathered, or scaled.

Our guests this week include a plethora of Hope for the Day Family:

Jackie Carmody, a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor & a registered board certified Art Therapist

Pam Baren Kaplan, a professional pet loss grief recovery and life coach

Ryan Shannon, a United States Veteran and Director for Hope for the Day’s upcoming Project RED Team.

Roger Rosenquist, Director of the Chicagoland chapter of Pets for Vets

Sandee Thomas and Tesla, Sip of Hope’s resident therapy dog team and leaders of a therapy dog ministry at Willow Creek Church in Barrington, IL.

Pam’s upcoming book, titled Tails of Unconditional Love: Your Journey to the Other Side of Pet Loss Grief is available for preorder now and scheduled to be released on August 15th, 2019.

The Conversations Cafe is a monthly live podcast recording at Sip of Hope Coffee Bar featuring education and open forum dialogue on the intersections of Mental Health within our communities. This education programming is brought to you by Hope For The Day with support from our partners in prevention, The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention of Illinois, and Banyan Treatment Center.

Join the conversation. We are in this together.

Conversations Cafe: Wide Wonder

The Conversations Cafe is a monthly event at Sip of Hope Coffee Bar, featuring education and open forum dialogue on the intersections of Mental Health within our communities. This education event is brought to you by Hope For The Day, with support from our partners in prevention, Banyan Treatment Center, Dark Matter Coffee, and Three Run Two.

The Wide Wonder Bus Tour, sponsored by Insight Behavioral Health Centers, made its Chicago stop at Sip of Hope and the Cruze-Harringtons participated in a fireside chat with Carl Evans, Director of Programming for Hope for the Day.

Robyn Cruze & Tim Harrington are the founders of Wide Wonder, described as "one bus, two parents, two teens, and a dog in a year of service in search of wide wonder". To date, they have traveled over one thousand miles in the quest for breaking stigma and bringing everyday mental health conversations to local communities. Sound familiar?

Robyn and Tim spoke with Carl and dished on what the experience has been like bringing Wide Wonder to a number of communities across the United States, what it’s been like to bring a family along for the ride, and why this mission is so important to them, both in proactive advocacy but also while being in active recovery themselves. You can find more information on their family and the Wide Wonder mission on their website.

Join the conversation. We are in this together.

This week wraps up our multi-part series celebrating Sip of Hope's first birthday! Celebrating on May 1st, 2019, we recorded founders, staff, friends, and family of Hope for the Day and Sip of Hope, capturing how the first-of-a-kind coffee shop - with all of its profits directly benefiting proactive suicide prevention - came to be, as well as what makes it tick on a daily basis.

Mike Vinopal, from Hope for the Day, joins us again as we bring you interviews with the awesome Sip of Hope baristas. Our interviews cover everything from what brought them to Sip of Hope, what they learned in the past year working at Sip of Hope, memorable experiences with shop patrons and community members, as well as how Hope for the Day's proactive suicide prevention (or "peervention") strategy has benefited their lives on a daily basis.

After listening to all the wonderful answers from the Sip of Hope barista family, you can see why the coffee shop has thrived in its first year and why the Logan Square community has embraced it wholeheartedly. Here's to the first year and many more.

Conversations Cafe: Living OUT Loud

The Conversations Cafe is a monthly event at Sip of Hope Coffee Bar, featuring education and open forum dialogue on the intersections of Mental Health within our communities. This education event is brought to you by Hope For The Day, with support from our partners in prevention, Banyan Treatment Center, Dark Matter Coffee, and Three Run Two.

June's episode is in honor of the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. Dedicated to celebrating the power and history of PRIDE, we will be using pieces of art to start these important conversations about the origins of PRIDE, mental health and the intersection of gender, identity, and orientation, and how to advocate and be an ally of the LGBTQ+ community.

Our excellent guest panelists joining us this week are Dr. Ashley Molin, Gracie Fischer, and Krystal Baisden.

Dr. Ashely Molin is licensed clinical psychologist and Associate Director of Behavioral Health at Center on Halstead, the midwest’s largest & most comprehensive LGTBQ+ community center.

Gracie Fischer is a student at the University of Illinois Chicago and a HFTD surrogate and member of the HFTD education team.

Krystal Baisden joins us from the Be Super Initiative, a movement calling for everyone to be the hero that is already inside them by using comic books and superheroes to address social justice issues.

Special thanks to Partners in Prevention, Busy Beaver Button Co., who gave participants the opportunity to take part in a special art engagement, creating their own buttons to celebrate the stigmatized parts of our own individual identities be it gay, trans, non-binary, immigrant, or suicide survivor.

This week kicks off our multi-part series celebrating Sip of Hope's first birthday! Celebrating on May 1st, 2019, we recorded founders, staff, friends, and family of Hope for the Day and Sip of Hope, capturing how the first-of-a-kind coffee shop - with all of its profits directly benefiting proactive suicide prevention - came to be, as well as what makes it tick on a daily basis.

This episode brings you a handful of awesome long-form interviews with Jonny Boucher, Founder and CEO of Hope for the Day; Kyle Hodges, Minister of Propaganda for Dark Matter Coffee; Luis Arroyo, Cook County Commissioner; and Brian Kmiecik, General Manager of Sip of Hope. Mike Vinopal of Hope for the Day joins us to bring you this week's interviews!

Background music for this week's interviews comes from Soundstripe artist, Shane Becker.

Conversations Cafe: Partners in Prevention

The Conversations Cafe is a monthly event at Sip of Hope Coffee Bar, featuring education and open forum dialogue on the intersections of Mental Health within our communities. This education event is brought to you by Hope For The Day, with support from our partners in prevention, Banyan Treatment Center, Dark Matter Coffee, and Three Run Two.

This episode is dedicated to Partners in Prevention, the forward-thinking businesses that help to support the HFTD mission and amplify the message that “IT'S OK NOT TO BE OK®️”, featuring podcast interviews with representatives from Three Run Two, Sip of Hope Coffee Bar, Dark Matter Coffee, and HFTD's founder and CEO, Jonny Boucher.

Stay tuned after the episode for the full version of the song used in this episode's interludes, “Everything All At Once” by Sleep On It.

Similar to the end of the first season, our interview this week with Jennifer May is another case of saving the best for last. There’s much of the conversation this week that wraps up many different threads across both seasons of Anthologies of Hope - intricacies of diagnosis with mental health conditions, following along with and feeling like you’re failing at the “checklist of life”, where friends and community play a major part in recovery of both of those, as well as how these will all permeate into everyday life.

We talk about her growth with and through pretty severe anxiety and how she handles that on a regular basis. We dive into a pretty spectacular transformation from a self-ascribed “girl who was afraid of everything” to someone who has challenged herself to being on a plane at least once a month and exploring everything she can!

Sarah Colbert joins us this week and discusses her trip to Heart Camp in detail, but more importantly, the journey up to that point that led her make the decision to attend.

Throughout our conversation, we cover a topic that hasn't been touched on much throughout any of our Anthologies of Hope episodes so far - the aspect of mental health and the professional workplace. We have a pretty frank conversation about what it’s like to work in an environment that is detrimental to your mental health, how big of a difference it makes to work in an environment that benefits your mental health, and using all the tools at your disposal to be able to make that change for the better.

Rick’s conversation with Sarah is one that hopefully brings light to the fact that returning to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

Conversations Cafe: Abuse, Consent, and Agency

The Conversations Cafe is a monthly event at Sip of Hope Coffee Bar, featuring education and open forum dialogue on the intersections of Mental Health within our communities. This education event is brought to you by Hope For The Day, with support from our partners in prevention, Banyan Treatment Center, Dark Matter Coffee, and Three Run Two.

This was a very special Conversations Cafe, dedicated to “Abuse, Consent, and Agency” - in honor of April being Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

In this episode, emceed by Carl Evans, Director of Programming for Hope for the Day, we combine past formats for Conversations Cafe where we feature education segments to raise the visibility of resources from community partners, including YWCA of Chicago and Porchlight Counseling Services, interspersed with performance pieces from talented members of our local community, to talk about the intersections between abuse in all of its forms, sexual assault, mental health, and self-expression.

Surrounding this special live event, YWCA of Chicago hosted a Denim Day Ribbon Making activation at Sip of Hope on Friday April 12th. Denim Day was on Wed. April 24th. If you are unfamiliar with the Denim Day Campaign, you can checkout denimdayinfo.org for more complete information. In between the excellent education pieces and audience discussion, our live performances include some powerful spoken word poetry from Natalie Dykema.

Wrapping up the night, we close it out with a powerful performance from Alex Subak, founder of the Be Victorious Project. After you hear the performance, you will definitely want to check out victoriousproject.org for more information on their mission to provide resources and support to people who have experienced or are experiencing intimate partner violence and their loved ones.

As always, you can find future Conversations Cafe events at PEERvention.org, Hope for the Day, or Sip of Hope’s Facebook pages. Or, just check in to Sip of Hope on the third Wednesday of every month.

This week's episode is all about the mental health boom and the language of mental health making its way into all sorts of the media that we consume regularly and for self-care. Rick dives deep into movies, television shows, stand-up comedy, podcasts, books, and Ennegram resources that have been discussed on Anthologies of Hope so far, detailing the background of what they mean to him or the individual guests from each episode.

We hope that some of these resources are helpful for you to laugh, learn, escape, and thrive; as well as also look forward to hearing some of your favorites of each type. So don't be shy - hit us up on any of our social media or email and let us know what your favorite mental health-related movies, television shows, stand-up comedy sets, podcasts, and books are!