It was an evening that ignited Lloydminster.
A pair of standing ovations, one for each speaker, summed up the crowd’s feelings of the Ignite event.
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Hosted by the Lloydminster Region Health Foundation (LRHF) on Jan. 17, it served as a chance for the community to talk about mental health.
“It’s more of a community building event. We really want to help get more information out for mental health and awareness,” said
Kagan Kneen, LRHF CEO.
Kneen says talking about mental health and hosting events like Ignite is more important than ever.
“Super important, right now it’s such a crisis globally in regards to the needs for mental health,” he said.
“People would take care of their physical health but their mental health was put to the back burner. Now there’s more voices, there’s more advocates, there’s more people talking about it.”
Content warning: sensitive mental health topics discussed below
Some changes were made last minute to the speaker lineup, which saw Jessica Janzen step in to fill the opening role.
She’s a mental health advocate who speaks at various events telling her story of struggle.
“I’ve had my own struggles with mental health and (I’m) still very active on my mental health,” Janzen said.
It wasn’t just her mental health that she focused on. She says it’s also about the brain.
“I wrote a blog post on it, not just focussing on mental health, but actually brain health,” she said. “If you can understand brain health, that’s what shifts mental health.
“I was so sick of spiralling out of control and going to the depths of despair,” she said. “There’s this other piece about it about your overall health. When I started looking at my brain and the health behind it, your brain consumes 25 to 30 per cent of what you put into your body. That right there gives you a framework of, what I put into my body actually matters.”
Janzen believes a portion of it is genetic when it comes to mental health, but overall health is another piece of it. She gave an example of what it’s like.
“If you were to go into toxic waste sewage, it would be hard for your body not to absorb it,” she said. “I want to be the best version of me, I know what it’s like to have a death sentence knocking at your door and you’re like, oh, time isn’t forever. You live a little bit differently when you’ve had to face death in the face like that.”
Her public speaking also details the short life of her son Lewiston.
“We lost our son, had a lot of tragedy happen in a short amount of time,” Janzen said. “So, our response to the pain was to use pain as rocket fuel to create change that we wish we had when my son passed away from a rare genetic disease.”
Lewiston had a rare genetic disease, spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).
She says although his life was short, she was determined to bring the joy. They dressed up for Halloween, held dance parties and staff at the hospital, even wore silly masks.
“You can’t argue that kid didn’t have joy in his life,” Janzen said. “Lewiston got 179 days and then he danced up to heaven. It is not what I thought my role as a mom would look like.”
From the pain the Love for Lewiston Foundation was created. A fundraiser that achieved much more than initially anticipated, led to the birth of a foundation that now helps those with SMA or who are struggling with mental health.
“We poured them (funds) back into our local hospital, which is the Alberta Children’s Hospital,” she said. “A big portion of it was supporting a new initiative and mental health facility called The Summit. It’s one of the only ones in the world that has this approach.”
Following a brief question-and-answer period, Jordin Tootoo, a retired NHL player and the first Inuk to play in the league, took to the stage to talk about his own struggles with his mental health and addiction.
Tootoo realized for his story to be told, he would have to talk about all of it.
“Towards the end of my career I knew that in order for my story to be told I had to get into the real-life stuff and the hardships and all that,” he said.
Tootoo, who lost his brother Terence to suicide, struggled with alcoholism before being told by Nashville Predators management it was time to get clean. He says it was hard to accept the fact he needed help.
“It was scary,” Tootoo said.
He says the opportunity to speak and tell his story has been important to him.
“Fortunately for me, it’s been a tremendous journey where I’m able to allow people to relate to a lot of my journey and to show them that – it doesn’t matter where you come from, the sky’s the limit,” Tootoo said. “As long as you accept failures as a learning tool. Life’s not all about the good times.”
He says mental health awareness is better today, it’s still important to talk about it.
“We all fight a fight no one knows about until we start talking,” he said. “I really feel that by me going out and sharing my story, it allows more men to find that courage and to let their prides and egos down a little bit.”
Tootoo says for men it’s difficult to talk about their mental health.
“A lot of us men, we carry it to the highest level,” he said. “A lot of us men, we carry a lot of shame and guilt for our past actions. We don’t ever want to bring that to light. I believe in order to move forward, you have to relive a lot of those moments to let them go.
“We were always taught to that men don’t show weakness and men don’t back down. Men never give up. I believe, for a true man to be vulnerable, that’s the key to success. Whether you’re a professional athlete, a business owner a successful business owner, we’re all human. We have issues and we have problems.”
He says telling his story on stage is especially important to Indigenous communities.
“I just feel that by allowing my story to be told to our people, especially the Indigenous communities, it allows people to accept their story and hopefully if I can change one person’s mindset in regards to seeing light at the end of the tunnel, I did my job,” he said.
As a speaker and mental health advocate, Tootoo says it’s important for kids to feel the love they are seeking from their parents.
“I feel like any child, any toddler, I was one, you were one, all we craved when we were kids is that love and affection from mommy and daddy,” he said. “I feel that in today’s society, it’s really starting to show that more men are being present to their kids.”
He says now as a father, it’s important for him to be present.
“For me, being a present father, a lot of new ways of doing things, change is good, change is OK,” Tootoo said.
“Our kids need that love and affection. That’s all I crave for when I was a kid. Being accepted for who you are. I find that slowly changing in the right direction.”
An onstage question-and-answer period with Tootoo wrapped up the night for the annual LRHF ignite event.
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