Episode 133

[Music] hey everybody and welcome to another exciting and amazing episode of Finding Peaks Yours Truly host president founder chief executive officer Chris Burns so grateful to be here today with an amazing professional but even better human Bria Kella how are you my friend I’m excellent I’m in this beautiful space here with you yeah all my favorite things I love it yeah Bri and I just spent about 35 minutes off off topic talking about a variety of other things of which we’ll get to a few here shortly but really excited to have you on um just an awesome professional and human but um Colorado provider Association that’s who you work for she’s the chief executive officer as well how long have you been with them about three years as of last month cool cool and and what does kind of like the day-to-day look like as the chief executive officer I know on your bio you only had five short things but as we’ve kind of dialogued back and forth uh it’s far more comprehensive than that yeah and now I can’t I can’t remember what’s in my bio but um oh yes now I do now I remember um so day-to-day looks different depending on the season um during the summer and fall I spent a lot of time traveling around the state meeting my members seeing their facilities um sometimes meeting the people that they serve and hearing about uh the great testimonials of work that’s being done across across the state um trying to figure out what their challenges and obstacles are and how we can maybe support fixing those or um removing barriers uh also what else during January through May I spend most of my time at the capital writing legislation working on legislation to support providers and the people that they serve uh it is very intense yeah uh it’s an intense season it’s a very intense season I have a really wonderful lobbying team and a really great staff who support me during that six months to make sure that my members don’t fall through the cracks um also I have four three amazing staff I have six five or six amazing contractors who are doing work in evaluations in the uh certified Pur family specialist credentialing the certified prevention Specialists credentialing uh we our association manager is responsible for networking events big events um campaigning policy information advocacy working with our members if they ever need anything uh our association manager calls us a coner style Association which I think is really fun but really all in all means that I will answer the phone anytime one of my members calls me um even if it’s just a catch up you know uh we really we really value the folks who are a part of Copa um all four of us who work for the STA on as staff for Copa were providers oh cool that is unque so we we are in a position that um we really want to support people that we know are out there working really really hard to save people’s lives actually funny story so um I was speaking with one of our members yesterday um about some fire code regulation that we’re working on for the state in terms of Behavioral Health entity license and I called five different folks and and what I realized is always text people before I call if they are treatment providers I will call directly if they aren’t if they work in prevention if they work in insurance if they work in funding if they’re administrator and not a direct service staff I will call directly if it is a direct service treatment provider staff I will text them and wait until they consent for me to call they need front facing I love that I didn’t realize it until yesterday and going back and forth with one of our members trying to figure out when I could call her and she was like I told you you could call me any time and I was like yeah I’m not going to do it yeah sorry I have this thing it’s apparently a thing so I figured that out yesterday so um essentially you know Copa is just there for whatever our members need all of the time I love it’s really well integrated and it it feels like you you all go into your providers and help inform various treatment modalities tracks strengths weaknesses um and and kind of accumulate data and support them in that regard yep so we don’t actually teach them anything um because we are prevention folks all four of us are prevention folks but we are connect so well connected to the state and the the providers who are at the state like working throughout the state is that we bring in people that we know would benefit the value of our membership love so you know the whole the whole concept of me joining Copa was that the whole Vision was is that they wanted to build a connected network of providers who were there for each other right that was the entire reason that Copo was formed is so providers could be together and learn from each other and share and obviously there are a ton of benefits that come from that outside of just personal professional development but in terms of the quality of access and the quality of care that’s provided um because people are connected to everything across the so the stuff that we don’t know we can bring people in on we sit in lots and lots and lots and lots of meetings um with various groups whether it’s state departments legislators Regional area entities msos whatever and we synthesize the information they give to us and send it out to our members so that they don’t have to sit inside of all of those meetings right right they can go and do the work that they need to do um and we can do that for them and just give them the pieces that will help them understand how to do their work better yeah that’s beautiful I mean really creating Synergy within a provider network is like unheard of where I come from I mean we were talking a little bit about Arizona I came to Colorado I was like oh my gosh they have pure services oh my gosh they have even therapeutic communities opportunities to not go to prison and throw away the and some of them are a little bit hard Edge but some of these resources you’re talking about and this is such a yeah it’s a rad State like for sure and it’s my favorite state whatsoever and if you like Seasons it is the best state um but people work together here yeah it’s it’s to varying degrees but I believe it’s getting better yeah yeah and I love that there’s something like you guys that kind of ties that together because it is when we’re all talking and communicating because it turns out Peaks recovery is not the best program for everybody and we need to know who and what is right and we need to understand that as providers as we can’t be the end all be all and when we can begin to do that we can inform things like we talked about earlier as like a really sophisticated recovery path that could potentially form healing for individuals who need it MH it’s a really cool thing well and the idea that recovery doesn’t stop or start often at treatment right right exactly I like to I like to tell people um when ego leaves the building that’s when the real work happens and that’s true for the people that you’re serving and also for the people who are running the organizations right when we work together when we collaborate when we let when we leave our egos at the door we can work better provide better services manage gaps and care right people don’t fall through the cracks right if we put our ego down and we’re together yeah you know and I know yall say it to your clients I know you do 100 I picked it up listening in the rooms you know so it is something that you know I share on all kinds of different levels yeah it’s almost like a I almost refer to it often as like recovery 2.0 and they’re like what do you mean leveling up yeah exactly right um really really cool you know I I when I when I met with you with our preall and even having the opportunity to sit with you like if I could Define you in one word be fighter oh yeah I mean you are a fighter you can tell that you’re willing to fight passionately for the ones that you serve and so it’s no wonder you’re out in front of this organization that’s doing such Dynamic work in the community in addition you come by it so honestly because you’re from MOS Colorado m m excuse me m Colorado that was in her bio too and I looked it up and I’m like oh man it’s on the edge of the sand wands really cool area and then we got into some like deep conversation about history I was like dang it um but you got to say it like you’re a m like pres Arizona um but in Manus Colorado you come by this honestly because rural Colorado lots of gaps in Services resources are abysmal and so I want to check in a little bit of like you know what kind of got you into the field were you beginning to see gaps in your community or what made you so passionate about that part so I actually got into the field because I’m a prevention specialist I’ve been a prevention provider sorry a prevention provider for decades yeah now um and it actually started because I was in the military okay um well probably even earlier than that so I come from a family that has a long history with substance use disorder um my grandmother was a you know 12 stepper she knew Bill W I’ve been in the rooms my whole life um I have lost many many of my family members to substance disorder um and yeah it was just something that I saw in my rural community that I grew up in in in the Central Valley of California meth was huge in the ’90s ‘ 80s and 90s in in rural California um and I came from a law enforcement family and I thought oh hey I can help I can help this problem I can help people not die if I go and do drug enforcement and so I was in the Coast Guard and I was a drug enforcement officer and uh I you know was a boarding team member and did all kinds of stuff in drug enforcement and immigration that made me feel really uncomfortable and I watched substance use disorder run rampant through the military um and nothing that we nothing that we did from a punitive approach um felt effective to me um I felt like the the strategies that I had been taught that I was currently participating in uh were actually harming people more um so when I got out of the military after eight years um I tried for a very short time to work for anheiser Bush I could I don’t see you doing well there I did not I did not do well um I did not do well and contrary to me joining the military I am not um great with authority as a whole um and you seem like a free thinker yeah Authority is a struggle for me obviously I’ve gotten better at it um because we learned to code um but what I saw in anheiser Bush was people with substance use disorders getting at least one case per month of alcohol free and substance use culture being really embraced so obviously I didn’t last there very long um so I joined Amore I gave up all my money and I joined americore and I started working at americore in in St Louis um if you’re familiar with downtown St Louis schools are underfunded um gang activity is really high um police over policing in black and brown communities is really bad um it’s you know the corruption in St Louis police department is really well known um and this was I was there in the early 2000s oh wow and um ended up doing gang prevention you know it was a it was a reading position like a reading to tutor position that they initially put me in uh but that work led me into um the detention centers into the youth facilities working for with the vision of Youth Services working on debate teams and clubs inside detention centers all of this stuff right and watching the kids that I was working in working with inside of the schools come in and out of the detention centers that I was also volunteering my time in right so the prison to the school to prison pipeline was a brand new like concept and and um we didn’t call it prevention then MH we just did the things that we knew we going to increase protective factors for kids who had really high risk factors right so now when I think about it it’s like oh yeah I was increasing protective factors and decreasing risk factors not knowing that that is the core Foundation of prevention yeah right we’re doing this thing it’s called nothing so this this started in started in um the early 2000s is when I started my career and I got really passionate about it um and I realized that I um really loved the kids that I was working with I’m still connected to some of them today beautiful beautiful young people um and I did not like their parents very much also I was a young white woman in a predominantly black community and did not understand almost everything sure like all I knew was what I saw and how I had been raised and so I didn’t like working with adults but I loved the kids and it was amazing um a couple years into that I lost um a young person to police violence um in my arms and it was really terrible um and my husband and I at the time who was working in homeless services and was AER even though they didn’t have peers then yeah um my husband and I really decided that it was probably best for my youngest daughter and us to leave the state and a part of that was because um I did not feel like or I felt like I was receiving too much positive attention because of how I present instead of who I was and I didn’t feel like I knew enough to be getting the attention that I was getting and so I wanted to take it to a community that melt that felt more aligned um with the power structures that I understood true um I felt like I shouldn’t be there telling everyone that I was an expert when I literally had no idea what I was doing right I was a kid yeah and I you know when I first started I thought I could change the world and As I Grew further and further into the work I realized that that was a really privileged white savior thing that I was doing and I was in the wrong place yeah um and so when we decided to leave uh we obviously moved to rural Colorado which is to much to my surprise a tri-ethnic community but in my mind was wider than where I was right right and so that was a place that uh fit me better and did not take away from the black women specifically who were doing the work in St Louis um and so when I got to St or when I got to Southwest Colorado um I would really I don’t know if you know this about Southwest Colorado but there’s not a lot of jobs yeah yeah exactly two and then drive 50 miles and there’s three so there so there’s not a lot of jobs out there and so for a couple years um I just worked random jobs and really got to know the community right so I worked at a church I was a youth pastor I worked at the train so if you’ve ever been on the Durango silver ton railroad I was the person taking the pictures she’s been in some of the most beautiful areas you can ever imagine so I like at the time I was really um I was really disappointed that I could not find work that was meaningful to me it actually felt really heavy to me that I could not be successfully in my role right um but what I realized is that learning that community and getting to know the people and really in meshing myself in the Durango Shuffle is what it’s called where you you know have four people living with you and you’re working three jobs and you still can’t really make ends me and they double up your your um food stamp money at the farmers market so you can have healthy food stuff you know and bro deals for shoes and whatever right what I learn is all of that stuff really all of that hardship prepared me for what was next M right and so when I ended up taking over celebrating Healthy Communities when I started working at celebrating Healthy Communities which is the last place I was before here yeah I knew what it meant to be a Community member there which was the reason I left St Louis right because in St Louis I was a white person in Social Services coming into a community telling them how to be better and in D in llata County monuma County um that region I was a part of the community working with my community members my neighbors my friends my loved ones to build something that was better for us together together yeah always together right so so that that passion really came from me acknowledging that I was in the wrong place like those kids I love those kids love them love them I’m so glad for my time with them like I loved my time with them and and the women that I worked with were amazing and the the mothers and grandmothers who brought me in and taught me about respect and and fried chicken culture and love and and like learning my place in people’s lives right like I’ll carry those with me forever forever forever but through the hardship times of llata County monuma County I was really doing the thing that I was trying to figure out how to do in St Louis exactly right yep yep so even thinking about all of the hardship right uh I needed those things to be a part of the community yeah because the community is facing hardship and if I don’t face it too how in the heck am I supposed to tell anyone anything yeah you went enlisted I think that’s the best way to go it’s like let’s go sit with the people well and it wasn’t even listening right it was experiencing yeah right you and I talked about earlier um I don’t have a substance use disorder who am I to tell anyone with a substance use disorder what’s for them mhm I’m not and I can listen all day long all day long I can listen to a person talk about having a substance use disorder and what that means to them and I still don’t know what they mean yeah like a at a core level at a core level but when someone talks about being a part of a poor rural or Frontier Community MH I got it yeah it’s so cool like as you’re sitting here describing like the story and the evolution of your career and the people that you’ve impacted and communities you’ve moved into I almost see like somebody going around around doing push-ups in this area H doesn’t feel right go push-ups over here only to get to this spot where you are today which is really really beautiful well- intended and you’re very very passionate about the team that you lead and the position you hold what was it initially about Copa that was like these people got go connected network of providers yeah that was it um so you know I was for almost 10 years I worked uh for celebrating Healthy Communities first as the program manager and then as the um executive director uh and the the whole point of Copa was or I’m sorry of celebrating healthy Community CHC uh was to build a connected network of providers and partners in monuma and llata counties right so from Bayfield ignasio Durango um hesperis M Cortez and Dolores and Dove Creek right like we’re talking the literal Four Corners where it’s, 1600 square miles to drive through llata County with only 50,000 people oh my goodness so the whole point was to build this connected network of people providing services to support at that time young people right but remember I told you like I didn’t like adults when I was working with kids and somewhere along my transition what I realized is that um adults are really struggling adults are really struggling and the kids are in turn struggling harder and if we don’t support the whole unit and we don’t build a community that supports both adults and youth and youth adult Partnerships everyone’s going to struggle right and so that was we had at the time when I started we had 44 partner organizations who worked in Coalition with us on both substance use and suicide prevention but what we know in prevention is that um if you are preventing suicide you are also preventing substance use you’re also preventing teen pregnancy you’re also preventing truancy and violence and and all of these things right and the whole part of celebrating Healthy Communities was to build a community so strong that no matter what happened from the outside we had each other right and we did it and and we did it and it was struggle and we really changed stuff and so when I saw Copa and their application and their vision and their you know job description and all of that stuff first of all randomly I had every skill that they needed yeah which is random because I told you like my day today is wild yeah oh yeah you’re just getting started like it is a random unique set of skills that it takes to run an association most people can’t even wrap their head around what an association does fortified in the pandemic right yeah right because I start yes you’re absolutely right right so the thing is is that I used to work for an association I used to run a training and development department for an association in Texas so I had this unique understanding of what Association boards look like right I was a provider so I knew like what providers needed right they really wanted to diversify they wanted to expand beyond the Front Range right they they wanted Rural and Frontier providers to be at the table I just happen to be a rural and Frontier provider right they wanted to see an increase in diversity across uh racial and like economic lines right they wanted small providers they wanted big providers they wanted black brown indigenous providers they wanted queer providers right they wanted a really diverse robust group of providers because we can’t create solid accessible Equitable provision of services if the people providing the services don’t fit right in that right and I just happened to be working in anti-racism like providing for decades yeah right I I come from this framework right I am connected to all of these and it was so funny when I came for my interview so I had a phone a zoom interview right cuz we’re on the tail end of we’re in the tail end of Co right and so I’m zooming from my little house in Manus while my parents are hanging siding on my little tiny house right and I’m bual I’m doing my little Zoom meeting and um it was really great and then they called me back and said hey would you mind coming here in like two days right so if yall don’t know Manus is like eight hours from Denver and um luckily my mom and dad were there and they were like yeah we’ll watch the kid go one two three go and so I get up here and I remember talking to um my my um program assistant at the time who’s now my Association manager and I said um I’m I’m 99% sure that they’re going to love me um but what’s going to be the funniest is that if I know someone in there who’s interviewing because I told them how connected I am at this stage Oh Be Wild like across the state right so I walk in to this interview View and um there are two people on the screen and four people in the room and I look up at the screen and there’s Tanya Wheeler and if you’re in recovery you know who Tanya Wheeler is right and I also knew Tanya Wheeler because Tanya Wheeler was a part of a coalition that I was on to reduce opioid use in Southwest Colorado and so I walk in I’m like hey Tanya Bri and so I left and I texted Sydney and I was like yep Tanya was in the car oh my goodness and so that idea that a connected network of providers started in that room that day because I was already connected that’s cool and and and that to me that was it yeah right I was like this is how I know I’m in the right place yeah in the fact that like it’s it’s such like an oblong like like the the the the job description you know and what it entails hey we need you to like actually have been in all corners of Colorado and actually know how to run a budget and grow funding and diversify funds and run programs too and I’m like yeah I can do all prior to that you’re like gosh what should I do it’s like oh my goodness CU I’m great at this and I do this that is so cool how that all came together and it goes back to that thing that I was talking about in terms of you know I was sitting in these spaces where I didn’t think I was doing anything that was valuable based on what I wanted to be doing right I was running a health center I was running um photographs and trains and youth groups and all this stuff and all of those things led to having the skills that I needed to run Copa yeah and also the staff because um my certification manager was my program assistant 8 years ago oh wow my Association manager was my program assistant three years ago I was calling her from her desk in my old office as I was driving here so she’s been with me for four years right
rural prevention providers that’s it that’s it yeah yeah we just connect connect connect yeah synergizing Colorado yeah Bria kinla let’s go that is so cool man I couldn’t listen I couldn’t do it without the providers obviously we currently have 50 members wow and growing every day um and while each organization has one vote on our board we represent their entire organizations that’s cool right like I represent hundreds of people in the state yeah you know I take calls from hundreds of people you kind of have to be in Denver kind of kind of it’s still it’s still questionable it’s still questionable um you know I still have my house at makus my daughter graduates in a year and a half she’s still down there yeah she’s no no she’s here yeah um but yeah one of the reasons that we moved here was so that she could go to a better school cuz M high school has 50 students in her graduating class I had in Sedona Red Rock yeah yeah wow yeah it’s pretty rural out there yeah it’s very yeah Frontier think it is Frontier so so yeah so she wanted to change and I you know um because I worked in suicide prevention um we suffered a lot of loss in our community and and we did a lot of work with families who suffered loss and were struggling um and without the services that we needed to to Really support that the prevention people are really all you got right so if you don’t have therapists who don’t take Medicaid or therapists who don’t take Indigent care um funds or you don’t have a treatment facility or um even Outpatient Treatment right or you have one that doesn’t have enough space for everyone who needs it 12 seats what ends up yeah what ends up happening is that the prevention folks and when I started there weren’t very many but there are more now recovery folks have to step in to those positions where a clinician should be stepping in yeah um and which is fine right because I believe in next best thing I believe in community but you know any clinician any peer any person working in a helping industry will tell you that secondary trauma is real especially when secondary trauma is directly tied to death and violence and so you know my daughter asked if if she could come here to go to a better school and I was really tired we had had a situation happen in M where one of my people passed away and the other one it was a murder suicide situation um teenagers at the high school next door to my house um that was the last real uh that was the last program I really ran was the the response to that situation and so when my daughter asked hey can we can we go I said yep check out a different scene yeah it’s time at least for the season yeah yeah that makes total sense but I still I still support and represent the people I left behind there yeah I know I know you wouldn’t leave there without doing yeah absolutely that’s why I still hear you like I still got a house there so we’ll see I don’t know see how the season turns no those are my people that’s cool you can tell I I love uh I love how you fight passionately for the people that you serve personally and professionally really really cool and something that’s came up that’s kind of off off topic we’ve talked about it and I think it it’d be cool for the viewers to get kind of your explanation on it we talked about it earlier before the show we kind of referred to it I referred to it as recovery 2.0 yeah I think it’s it’s really cool for people to to understand you know when we’re getting into recovery it’s it’s not about substances it’s not necessarily about the depression it’s it’s about this multifaceted approach that takes a lot of underpinnings to inform quality of life yeah and so maybe you can paint for the viewers a little bit like how do you help folks in community get on that path towards their success and CU When I got into recovery I swear 22 I was like if I just quit doing heroin life is going to be perfect cuz it causes all my a little bit helpful yeah it definitely helps the risk factors go down can be yeah struggle back then it was the oxycotton stuff right so same thing but yeah yeah so how do we how do we get into that recovery 2.0 why is it so important for people to know about that process you know that’s a really good question actually and I know that I was supposed to prepare for that but um it’s off the list it is it is off the list um I you know it’s a really good question because there is no starting point yeah yeah right because if I could magically like shake my wand and and change the landscape of the world that we live in then this would be so much easier right I’d be like everyone has everything that they need and there are no risk factors by which you have to live and no trauma um everybody has food to eat right you have food you have housing your parents aren’t stressed like you understand the risks of substances in your life right like all if I could right that’s I mean that’s really how you fix it right um um so since in in in not being able to do that I think the start of it is just understanding where people are coming from right and not the I’ve been there I’ve integrated I’m also living this life although that is really helpful it turns out yeah um actually I was teasing about something that was happening in Manus the other day and a person that that doesn’t like me very much came on and was like well you don’t understand cuz you don’t live here anymore I was like yeah all right good luck with that that’s right but so outside that really does help integrating in the world right and not just I’m the Savior come in to tell you what the science says and how you’re going to fix it but actually understanding it but really being able to understand that people are really meeting us in um places that we might not understand right and and that’s okay yeah right um that’s okay and that’s okay yeah it’s okay that I don’t understand what it means to have a substance use disorder that does not mean that there are people with substance use disorders who do not ask me questions all of the time absolutely all of the time right um and in that what it does is it builds a relationship it is not a therapeutic relationship although there might be therapeutic outcomes that come from it it is not a professional relationship it is not it is a relationship and I think that that one thing is the key and the way that we look at relationships and the way that we intention relationships and the way that we intersect our relationships right so we did a lot a lot a lot of work in Southwest Colorado around youth adult Partnerships because what we saw was that our kids were dying at alarming rates through suicide and substance use um and their biggest complaint when surveyed repeatedly was that they felt like the adults didn’t care about them yeah 76% of young people felt like kids didn’t care about them on the flip side because remember I told you about how I hated parents and then I figured out that like parents were actually really struggling too on the flip side we surveyed the parents and the parents 74% of the parents said that they valued and tried to show their young people that they were valued so we saw a very opposite yeah response and what we figured and what we thought about and what we researched was that adults thought they were acting in a way that was valuing people valuing young people but the young people weren’t receiving it right because they wanted a different kind of care and so what we ended up doing was involving the whole community in youth adult Partnerships we trained them what it was we taught young people how to work with adults we taught old young older people how to work with young people we taught the community the cities the counties how to build um youth focused events inside of the drinking culture events that were happening like we worked with the newspapers who were saying wild wildly uh inappropriate things about young people and suicide and and all of this stuff so we taught the community how to have relationships with each other that’s cool and I I absolutely believe that that is how you start doing recovery 2.0 to be honest it’s what I do with Copa members too right where you might not know that provider who’s out in L hun right but I hear him say something and it reminds me a lot of you and so I’m going to be like hey Chris you should meet this guy right so it’s also something I do here right that is called Community organizing what I did at celebrating Healthy Communities was Community organizing but really all it is is facilitating relationship building yeah meet him meet her meet this person meet this conect here this exciting new thing I learned you guys should talk about it yeah we should talk about how to implement this does this work for you right so if you start at relationship not I’m here to save you not I know more than you not anything just hey let’s sit in a room and talk about hiking right right um and then you start to trust me and I start to trust you we did it we built a community right here in this room it’s a beautiful thing and I love that you hit on that because when I got into recovery I was isolated disconnected and all alone and I told myself a story that I wasn’t valuable enough sure to be a part of because of the 74% study that you talked about I didn’t feel like I was shown that I didn’t feel like the child adult relationships that I had and formed that so I love that you said that because we’re when one becomes two we become stronger and I love the opportunity in recovery to Simply split our hardships and our victories 50/50 yeah it’s one of the coolest and most simple things to be a part of and you do it so well like your your story of impact is like a lion like going around just be like oh see no need here and just keep moving keep moving and helping people and like leading the charge and now you got more lions and lionesses and people and now it’s fortified and you tell a really beautiful story that I do want to I do want to caution this because you know while I do feel like a lion sometimes um truly I do um and like tearing out necks of people who come for my people kind of right I do feel like that sometimes but I do want to be really clear that precious Sydney Katie my staff um Carry Me often I love that often and and um I myself have a very connected network of people support me um and hold me accountable uh and let me lose my [ __ ] sometimes right um and a and a perfect example of this because I do want to make sure that I feel like an actual human being and not this like wild Warrior woman um is that um you know something happened in session this year last year uh that I knew was going to uh lead to people’s death and I knew it was going to f and or I knew it was going to pass and I knew that there was nothing I could do about it and I got home at 3:00 in the morning and my kid had left my house a mess and my dog had gotten into the trash and I took the trash can and I threw it at the dog and I screamed at the kid and and all of that stuff and then I called my friend who’s also an executive director of a program that he is very passionate about and I said um I’m broken I can’t do this and he was like that’s okay got you that’s okay so lion yes human also yeah yeah so that’s really important right like I really feel I worry that people like think that I’m this Warrior who is never ending um it I feel like it it leads to a perception that you have to be perfect to do what I doh um yeah I think for me your story really speaks to the multitude of interactions relationships and connections that You’ been so so privileged and so grateful to come upon in your career and it is so like like I I was saying the other day on my Instagram I was like my headstone will read I was lucky enough to be surrounded with great people like just great people like who am I I look to my right of my left just like you and I’m like holy smokes this is cool so I love that you said that I really do and um one of the things I want to get to and it’s it’s actually my favorite question to ask people because it it tends to be the most personal CU it always starts there before it goes professional um and passionately professional in a lot of directions and so I wanted to wrap up today’s show was just asking you you know you’ve obviously shown for the viewers today that you have a lot of passion a lot of compassion empathy Insight connectedness within our communities our Behavioral Health Systems and our provider networks um but you tell a really formidable story that kind of pushed you in this direction certainly where you sit today in the people that you get to help and so I just wanted to ask you what what is your why why do you continue to do this I love this question um precious our credentialing manager she asks this question and kind of forces us to focus on that often when things seem like a lot um so you know I told you I I work with a lot of young people um who I loved a lot and really kind of push me in this direction um but I was feeling like I was kind of um stagnant in Durango working for the and the hospital or the college and stuff and um in 2011 my husband who had been um in recovery for nine years went back out returned to use and um he rapidly went from drinking to someone else’s pills to um you know me searching for him under beds every single day um and by may he had died but suicide because of his substance use um he was in liver failure um he I found him in a basement um feeling just about that low in his shame um and my daughter at the time was three three and a half um and he died on Easter and uh my my little baby said um you know you should have helped him more and of course you know she couldn’t see that I was crawling in through his you know um kitchen window on The Daily right like begging him to stop drinking and um Waiting for God to come and fix it um and there was this moment that I remember after he died because it was a very hellacious six months with him um he he deteriorated very quickly and and he went from a person who was running homeless Services as a peer um working through Hurricane Katrina and all of the refugees that came through from her like he was amaz making national news about this work that he was doing to you know hiding under the bed covering himself with the sleeping bag because he was afraid that I would find him he was so ashamed and he he felt so much shame and and I went back and forth between like I’m going to murder you if you don’t get yourself together to begging and pleading that he please come help me with his daughter right but I remember one moment very very clearly where um my friends and I walked into his house and he was passed out on the floor um and he was definitely overdosing uh and before we called the police we were like or before we called the hospital we considered picking his body up putting it in the driver’s seat of his car and turning it on and calling about an impaired driver so that he would go to prison because he had been to prison before he had a felony for substance use um and they would send him back back because of that you know was 2012 it was the wild time the Wild Wild West um and we really really considered because we knew what was going to happen they were going to come pick him up they were going to pump his stomach they were going to get him right and then they were going to discharge him because there was nowhere else for him to go yeah there were no Services there were no like therapy was so expensive um the Community Mental Health Center that we had at the time didn’t have space to see him they were the last people to talk to him treatments thousands of dollars treatment a thousand of dollars I actually looked and looked and looked all over the state to try and find um a treatment facility for him because I knew he needed treatment like I knew enough about Behavioral Health right I studied social work and for my Master’s Degree and and I knew enough about knowing what he needed but the only thing I could find that we could afford to pay for because remember I was like working as a part-time healthc care assistant and a youth pastor I had no money none um and I found a place for him in Fort Collins that was run by the church that we had left in St Louis and they agreed to pay for him to go there um I didn’t know that steep Denver existed at the time I would have sent him there immediately but one of the things I remember when I was going through all of this right because not only am I taking care of my husband who is very very sick also trying to take care of my very young daughter um and and and and also trying to take care of myself yeah turns out right like trying to take care of myself in this really poor Community right and what I remember thinking after he died and my daughter looked at me and said you didn’t help him enough was if I have anything to do with this no other mother will ever have to feel this again and it took me a little while I had to gain a couple more skills before I got to Copa or even before I got to CHC I had to gain a few things that I needed to help me build an organization and build a prevention system that I believed would work um but the the moment I stepped into my role at celebrating Healthy Communities I knew that that’s where that was going to happen like I knew in my heart of hearts and because data um you know our hearts are awesome but also like data wins the show um I knew that building that Community would make it a place where no other mother had to feel alone in that situation because here’s the thing all of those mothers that I sat with as they lost their young children as they themselves struggled with their own mental health challenges as they sat with their husbands or the amount of men and Farmers God bless them they are the highest risk for suicide in our state sitting with people who literally differ than you on almost every single topic except your love for each other and the community is such a gift and to watch a person that you’ve sat with struggle to live and see them eight years later thriving happy and healthy like that that is a job well done and there’s no amount of data right it’s very hard to collect that data right but being able to see and this is why they’re still my people right yeah I feel that like being able to see them happy healthy and thriving when they were like on the brink yeah like it’s brilliant that my why happens so often that I never really have a chance to fix it or to like forget it you know what I mean like beautiful It’s amazing And even here right working where people are generally happy healthy and thriving MH right and knowing that my people who are happy healthy and thriving are the ones doing that work that I did there um I know how much that hurts yeah and so while I’m not dealing with it in the same way I’m there supporting people and hopefully making it just that much easier for them to like work through what they are also working through in their secondary trauma yeah wow I absolutely love that and I connect with you on a lot of that why and thank you so much for taking an experience and fortifying it indic community so that others don’t have to walk through what you did and I would have to imagine 9 10 years later right yeah your daughter would say something like that’s my mom oh yeah she okay so my daughter is rad my daughter is Super Rad and she’s a little activist and and I I love her a lot she’s super super passionate and obviously she doesn’t remember her dad but she knows that I’ve been working for her dad since she can remember she knows my why you know and um she um is 16 so she doesn’t always say it outright um but I heard her talking about me the other day oh yeah and I was like oh she’s talking about me she’s she’s acting proud of me um but when we first moved to Denver we live in this beautiful house in in Cheesman Park in Denver um which of course we share with four other families but you can’t tell you can’t tell looking at it right like it just looks like a big beautiful right and I my daughter came out to visit on her uh 13th birthday because I had moved up here first and then she followed once I found a place to live so I took her there before we could move in she was moving in like a week later I took her there and she has her little hands on her hips and she’s looking up at this giant house and she goes mom you did it my God heart taking me to the Grave yeah oh my goodness that is so cool and thank you so much for joining us today thank you so much for sharing so openly with our viewers the Peaks recovery family um and what Copa is doing in the community and uh personally and professionally I’m just grateful to know you and be connected with you is there anything how do people find information about Copa website uh Coop providers association.org has everything you need to know about us we also on LinkedIn Instagram and Facebook Okay um our association manager Sydney is the bees knes at social media so if we know it you’re knowing next that’s so cool well check them out Copa thank you so much again Bria uh it’s been amazing having you on the show Bria kinla everybody thank you so much peace