Speaker 1 • 0:00 - 0:31 • 98%
I started revisiting my passion for art as a way to express what was going on without words that I didn't have to explain how I was feeling. 'cause honestly, I didn't really know how I was feeling. I couldn't explain it because it's so ubiquitous. Like grief is like physical, psychological, like there's so many pieces to grief and how it hits you. It does often defy words. I've learned to put language to my grief over time.
Speaker 1 • 0:31 - 0:46 • 98%
But art and music and these non-verbal ways of expressing grief gave me a place and a space that I never had or that I didn't think I had. So the art came back to me.
Speaker 3 • 0:51 - 1:21 • 96%
Hi, welcome to this episode of Daring Dreams with your host Haley Bowen. I am here today with the lovely ham Pastrick, who has a very, very inspiring story. And we talk a lot about purpose here at the Daring Dreams podcast. And sometimes we have businesses that start out because of a purpose, and sometimes we have businesses that try to incorporate it later. And this business, it's a nonprofit, started out as a major labor of love and it still is.
Speaker 3 • 1:21 - 1:24 • 91%
And so I wanna introduce you to Pam. Hi. Thanks
Speaker 1 • 1:24 - 1:25 • 98%
For having me.
Speaker 3 • 1:25 - 1:45 • 95%
You are welcome. So in this podcast I really wanna talk about nonprofits and specifically yours and a little bit of the marketing behind it. So let's get started with first, why don't you share with everybody what is the nonprofit that you started? What's it do? Who's it help? All that kind of beautiful information.
Speaker 1 • 1:45 - 2:17 • 97%
The nonprofit that I started is called NB Copes, and it's purpose is to support children and their families that are coping with the death of a family member. And this work started about 10 years ago under a different organization in the beginning Camp Carry Society, because I had lost my son, Michael, in 2012. And what I found is that there weren't resources that were helpful or could help us in the way that we envisioned early on.
Speaker 1 • 2:17 - 2:51 • 98%
So there was an opportunity to go to Vancouver with my family and attend a family retreat that was about four days long. And it was a very transformational experience. And I came back thinking maybe I could do this and, and do I have the capacity to do this? And, and is it, you know, but I had that passion, I guess, for the work because of my lived experience of loss and my need to channel that grief that I had in, in a positive direction.
Speaker 1 • 2:51 - 3:01 • 90%
So NB Copes was developed in 2020 just before Covid . Okay. And it was, it's
Speaker 3 • 3:01 - 3:02 • 97%
Newer than I thought.
Speaker 1 • 3:02 - 3:03 • 91%
, pardon me?
Speaker 3 • 3:04 - 3:05 • 98%
It's newer than I thought.
Speaker 1 • 3:05 - 3:41 • 96%
Right. And, but Camp Carey had been running and I was the regional director Oh, okay. For Camp Carey, I should say the Atlantic Director. And so we transitioned from that organization that was based in BC and administered through BC to a local grassroots organization that I felt would engage more potential sponsors and board members. And really we're small here in the East Coast. So I felt to be successful in the long term that a local organization would be more, more effective.
Speaker 1 • 3:42 - 3:52 • 86%
Okay. And how that, so I've been added for 10 years, but, and b Copes as a new organization started in 2020, and then we received charity status in 2021.
Speaker 3 • 3:53 - 4:06 • 96%
Okay. Yeah. That, that, that's great. Charity status. That's hard to do. So yeah, tell me about, like, a little bit more about like what happens if, like, what exactly do you do for the grieving families?
Speaker 1 • 4:07 - 4:42 • 97%
So we intend to provide creative and holistic supports in a family centered way in natural environments, a retreat model so that families actually connect with other families who are going through grief and loss. And our hope and what has been proven, I guess, for the work that we do is that we create community communities of support that are long term rather than kind of go to a program or go to a service.
Speaker 1 • 4:42 - 4:46 • 96%
We're trying to create this longer term community. Yeah.
Speaker 3 • 4:46 - 4:48 • 95%
'cause grief is not ever over, I don't think.
Speaker 1 • 4:49 - 5:20 • 98%
No, I think that's one of the, maybe myths in society, I guess if you haven't experienced a close loss, that grief is somehow a series of stages or steps that we get through and then we go back to normal. But people that have lived through these types of losses know that grief morphs. It just kind of changes over time. And I would say that we develop better coping skills, hopefully Yeah.
Speaker 1 • 5:20 - 5:57 • 97%
Over time to integrate the loss into your life. But it is your story, and it's a part of your story that, that isn't going away. So, for example, I just passed the two year mark of, I had lost my husband two years ago. So I'm not a stranger to having loss in my life. It's just like a milestone. It's something that you know is coming and you have to move through it, and you do it in the best way that you can. But certainly when you're surrounded by people that get it, there's a sense of comfort associated with it that, that you're not alone in your loss.
Speaker 1 • 5:57 - 6:05 • 92%
So I think with Vy Copes, we've worked hard to fulfill that mis mission of people not feeling isolated in their grief.
Speaker 3 • 6:06 - 6:30 • 96%
Right. That's, that's really good. I know the other thing that you do through Vy Copes is you kind of take, like you're an artist as well. Yes. And tell, tell me a little bit about how you incorporate that passion, the art passion into this. 'cause I, I think it's really important that people incorporate what they're so passionate about into their businesses, . So how did you incorporate that?
Speaker 1 • 6:31 - 7:02 • 97%
Well, it's interesting because I think a lot of artists are inclined when they're very young. So I was very inclined as a, a very young person around art. And it was part of my family. My father was involved in art and my brother, we all had these interests. And as I developed, I kept doing art until my high school years. Then after high school, I deviated and became a nurse.
Speaker 1 • 7:03 - 7:36 • 98%
I did my undergraduate degree in nursing. But my passion for art never waned. It's just that my life went in a different direction and I wasn't able to engage in art like I had wanted to because life got really busy. And it was, it was like an add-on for my life. But interestingly, when I had this really significant loss in my life, I struggled with how I could get through that. Like how was I ever going to cope with, with such a, a life shattering event.
Speaker 1 • 7:36 - 8:09 • 98%
And I didn't feel I was equipped to. And I think a lot of people feel that way. You just feel like you're never gonna get through it. And how will you get through it? And there's no recipe and there's no fix for this type of loss. I started through going to that retreat with my family. I started revisiting my passion for art as a way to express what was going on without words that I didn't have to explain how I was feeling.
Speaker 1 • 8:09 - 8:42 • 98%
'cause honestly, I didn't really know how I was feeling. I couldn't explain it because it's so ubiquitous. Like grief is like physical, psychological, like there's so many pieces to grief and how it hits you, that it does often defy words. I've learned to put language to my grief over time. But art and music and these nonverbal ways of expressing grief gave me a place and a space that I never had or that I didn't think I had.
Speaker 1 • 8:42 - 9:15 • 97%
So the art came back to me, right. And it was a way that I could navigate these things. So I started, you know, painting and drawing and I, I sculpt and doing all kinds of mediums, but I also decided that if I was going to help the organization grow, that I would need to be equipped. And we don't have a lot of art therapists in our province, very few art therapists. There are people that use art as the, but art therapy is actually psychotherapy.
Speaker 1 • 9:16 - 9:47 • 97%
So it is a specialty. And I, I felt, you know what, I could really contribute to the organization by having that expertise. And so I started my graduate studies through Toronto Art Therapy Institute. It was a lot of convincing people that this type of service was needed or that it wasn't a replication of an existing service, that it was different and that it offered, it filled a gap somewhere in the services in the area.
Speaker 1 • 9:47 - 10:18 • 97%
And also I think we're society that sometimes thinks that, okay, you've had a loss in your life, lots of people lose people, you'll be okay. And so sometimes there's a sense that it's a part of life and that, you know, you don't really need any support or you're, you're, you're fine. But we know from a research perspective that youth and children in particular are very vulnerable to these life events.
Speaker 1 • 10:18 - 10:50 • 97%
And it can have very adverse effects on their mental health. But it was a matter of trying to bring that evidence forward to explain to people that the service was needed and really finding some key people. And I happened to find two key people that I knew that could maybe help me to push the agenda and help me to get some initial funding to pilot the project. Okay. So I was able to find two people that said, you know what?
Speaker 1 • 10:50 - 11:30 • 96%
Yeah, you're right. We should do this. It was actually Yna Hurley and Jason Downey that Okay. You know, they were, they were doing work with the board of directors at the regional through the MineCare initiative that's not there anymore. But it was linking it to mental health and youth mental health. And this would've been in 2014, so, you know, 10 years ago really trying to push that agenda around mental health. And we just developed a little committee and I wrote a proposal and certainly had a great deal of support from the org, from the camp carry organization that I was with before.
