CLBC Editorial Board Members, from left to right:
Top row: Akshay Sachdeva (Surrey), Shaun O’Leary (Victoria), Matthew Yeomans (Chilliwack), Natasha Bidinoff-Gardiner (Nelson). Bottom row: , Bryce Schaufelberger (Mission),
Lara Gunkel (Vancouver), Brandon Wilkinson (New Westminster).
Hello! We are the CLBC Editorial Board made up of self advocates and community living leaders from across the province. Our role is to work with Community Living BC to improve communication with the people they serve and to find ways to share the stories and contributions of people with diverse abilities in B.C. Working together on this magazine has been a one way to let CLBC and the broader community know what we think is important.
The theme for this edition of Celebrate Diverse ABILITIES Magazine is “Mental Wellness”.
If you’re human, you go through stuff. Anxiety, depression and stress can affect all of us in our day-to-day lives. For many people with developmental disabilities, isolation and loneliness is also something they experience. With the pandemic taking place over the last few years, more people across society have experienced those feelings and understand how mental health can be impacted.
We feel there is an important opportunity to change perspectives about mental health and wellbeing, now that it is being talked about more than ever. When we don’t share how we’re feeling, it’s easy to get stuck in our own minds, like a dark hole.
Expressing yourself and talking about how you are feeling can be therapeutic. It can really help to bring people together to talk about these ideas openly. It leads to new opportunities for strengthening our mental wellness.
In this edition, self advocates from across B.C. share stories about different things they do in their daily lives that contribute to their mental wellbeing.
One message we want to emphasize is that there are people around you to connect with, and there are resources there to support you. You’re not in this alone.
We hope you enjoy these stories and take away some information that can help support your own mental wellness. As always, we look forward to your feedback and ideas for the next edition of Celebrate Diverse ABILITIES Magazine.
Sincerely,
The CLBC Editorial Board