So much has happened since our last update that it’s hard to know where to start. Three of our board members have been in the Colorado high country for much of that time working on various community wellbeing projects.

We’ll begin with the news of receiving a generous grant from their Western Colorado Community Foundation COVID19 Response program. These funds, along with the support of Annemarie Matulis & A Voice at the Table in offering AAS SoulCare curricula, will allow us to continue offering virtual peer support and education sessions for suicide survivors in our community.

During the late spring and early summer we’ve held QPR training, Harm Reduction 101 training, and held a 6 week SoulCare curriculum review and discussion group - all of which were well attended and well received. Our board secretary attended a brand new virtual AFSP TalkSavesLives training online which we will be adding these sessions to our events calendar as well.

We hope you’ll join us for Mesa County’s 2020 World Suicide Prevention Day - Community Walk!

And because we’re survivor-centric research advocates here are a couple of cool opportunities for people with lived experience to give input. The Transform Research Project is a wonderful academic research project which features an extensive bibliography for folks to peruse. Along this line of discussion, if you’re reading this and happen to be someone who has felt presences, visual or quasi-visual experiences, and alterations of space, time or distance, this anonymous survey through Florida State University might be of interest.

Some more great news is the FCC’s Designation of 988 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which was a topic of discussion during the AFSP Annual Advocacy Forum. This is one giant step toward making sure everyone in crisis can receive care. Now it’s up to all of us to follow Rocky Mountain Crisis Partner’s lead in providing an excellent peer support option to the crisis call menu!

The Healing Arts for Youth workshop is once again in the reorganization process because of public health advisements. Now we are aiming for mid-late October via a moderated virtual event with materials picked up, delivered, or mailed to the participants. We are determined to make this happen!

Another super exciting thing is that we get to work with the Western Colorado Writer’s Forum on two youth bibliotherapy workshop, a workshop for veterans, and a workshop for caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients! While this may not sound like typical postvention, writing and art therapy is a well documented healing modality that people can use for the rest of their lives during times of grief and stress. Please follow their website for details.

Mesa County Public Health just released their 2019 Suicide Report . While we all look forward to the day when no such report is necessary, we continue to work toward a way to keep ourselves and one another alive. Some cool news we’ve heard is that MCPH is working on a ground breaking community data collection project to help us all.

We hope you’ll join us for Mesa County’s 2020 World Suicide Prevention Day - Community Walk!

Our pals at Rocky Mountain MIRECC Postvention group are giving presentation on provider loss on Aug 12th. Register here.

Postvention Pals

Meeting and collaborating with other postvention advocacy organizations is affirming and encouraging. So many thanks to Rocky Mountain MIRECC for providing us with such great materials to share at Western Slope events!

Melissa Brown, postventionist at the CDC has begun offering these amazing comfort cards for free! Our local Living with Loss group has already begun to use them for encouraging our local folks affected by COVID19 isolation and stress.

Caring Cards

It’s been a pleasure working with the Caring Cards project. It may seem like a small thing, but it’s not. We all need a life sometimes. If your group would like to share some kindness, please contact them for a shipment of no-cost cards -which they’ll mail right to your door!

Looking ahead to 2020 International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day on Nov. 21st, here we honor the families and friends from last year’s event who sat for portraits donated by Will Campbell Fine Art.