Ordinary Courage with Vanisha Breault Vanisha Breault

In this episode of the Ordinary Courage Podcast I am solo! 'My Beautiful Boy' is about my youngest son, his struggle with addiction and mental health over the past couple of years and it's about digging deeper as a mother, the courage to stay in the fight and to take each day as it comes.
 
(I recorded this episode outside the studio so there are a couple glitches hehe & the sound quality is not our usual top notch, hopefully be back in the studio soon)

I also threw in a plug for Terminator Foundation, the Not for Profit Organization that I founded 7 years ago. Terminator works with youth and young adults who are struggling with addiction and mental health issues. We use the sport of Triathlon to revolutionize their lives and support their journey to recover!
The Truth is You Can Recover!
https://terminatorfoundation.com/

Follow Terminator:
https://www.instagram.com/terminatorfoundation/?hl=en

In this episode of the Ordinary Courage Podcast I have the absolute honor of hearing Maddison's story, told through her Mama, Jennifer Ann Holleman. This is a story about loss, Human Trafficking and a mothers fight for justice, for inner healing and to tell the story of Maddison to anyone who will listen. 
This episode is brutally painful and hard to hear. But we need to hear these stories because this atrocity is far from over. 

In the words of Martin Luther King Jr, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter." 

I'm here to tell you- THIS. MATTERS. 


From Jennifer:
In 2015, my world changed forever. Maddison was killed in a horrific car accident in Edmonton, Alberta. The man driving was intoxicated, the man driving was a “John”. Although Maddison was killed by a drunk driver, I see the ultimate cause of her death to be Human Trafficking. 
Since her death, there have been two year long investigations. No justice has ever been served for what happened to my daughter. I have taken it upon myself to become an advocate for Human Trafficking. In my Community, my Province, my Country. I have spoke at many conferences, to schools and at AGM’s for various organizations, as well as to the Standing Committee for Justice and Human Rights. I have just recently spoken to Paul Brandt and the Alberta Human Trafficking Task Force and am looking forward to working with them in the near future. In the Fall of 2020, I was nominated for the Gwangju Prize for Human Rights, initiated in South Korea. To even be considered for this award was incredibly humbling. 
Losing Maddison has been the most difficult time in my life. It was a big decision to make the choice to tell her story, as it keeps this loss so fresh.  I have always maintained that if sharing what happened to her, helps just one young women, then her death was not in vain. And I can say without a doubt, that so many more have been touched. 
I will continue on this journey as long as long as Human Trafficking is a crises in this Country and for as long as I am physically able.  Education and awareness are the key factors in keeping our youth safe. What happened to Maddison, should never happen to any young woman. Ever.

Follow Jennifer:
https://www.instagram.com/jennielou42/

1-833-900-1010
For immediate assistance, call the Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-833-900-1010. You can reach the confidential Hotline 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in more than 200 languages.
https://www.canadiancentretoendhumantrafficking.ca/nationalhotline/

In this episode with guest, Associate Minister of Mental Health & Addiction Jason Luan we discuss some of the historic changes that the Government of Alberta has made to the addiction/mental health landscape in the past several months here in the Province of Alberta.
Minister Luan also shares some of his personal journey coming to Canada, his early career in Social Work and the life choices that brought him to where he is today, which he calls "A window of opportunity"!

Link to Learn more about Alberta's Government and the Transformational Changes being made in Alberta:
https://www.alberta.ca/associate-minister-of-mental-health-and-addictions.aspx

Bio:
Minister Luan was elected as Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Calgary-Foothills on April 16, 2019. He previously served as an MLA for Calgary-Hawkwood (2012-2015).
Married to his wife, Ms. Fengying Zhang for 34 years, Luan has two daughters. Graduating from the University of Calgary with a Masters of Social Work in 1990, he has dedicated his career to public service, promoting healthy families, strong communities and economic prosperity. He served in a variety of roles in provincial and municipal governments including as a child protection worker, a social planner, a manager and as a senior counsellor.
Luan has also managed funding for nonprofit social service agencies for over 20 years. He co-chaired the Immigrant Sector Council of Calgary (2006-2012) and served on the Calgary Council on Mental Health and Addictions from 2017 to 2018. He is proud to have made a difference in many lives throughout his professional services and community volunteering, and received the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012 for community services.
Jason Luan was appointed as the Associate Minister for Mental Health and Addictions on April 30, 2019. His extensive experience in working with those suffering from addiction makes him uniquely positioned to handle the key commitment to address the opioid epidemic in Alberta.

In this episode of Ordinary Courage I had the gift of getting to sit down with my friend David Lewry. I have been a guest on David's podcast twice now, so it was pretty neat to be on the other side of the microphone hearing David's story. 
David's story is tragic in so many ways, sexually abused as a little boy, the shame, secrecy and confusion that came from that and then later in life battling depression coupled with addiction. Finally discovering his path to freedom. 

Today, David lives a life of service. He is probably one of the most kind, compassionate and giving humans I know. I am so grateful to know him and grateful to have him on the OC podcast sharing his extraordinary story of courage. 


Find David Here:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidlewry/?hl=en
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/david.lewry.33 and https://www.facebook.com/FreedomsPathRecoverySociety
Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-lewry-539b9532 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DavidLewry?s=09

A Little About David:
David has been a social worker since 1999. He began his career managing a homeless shelter for families, “Inn From the Cold” in Calgary. His career took a different path once he realized change was needed, both internally and externally in his life. He began working more and more with individuals and families, who were struggling with addiction and mental illness. 
By December of 2011, he completed the curriculum for his new programs. He began offering a Pathway to Freedom groups and one on one counselling in Calgary for anyone who needed help. The group workshop outlines different strategies for understanding and recovering from chemical and non-chemical dependency. The one on one counselling centers around each individual’s identified needs and uses tools and ideas which remain fluid and interchangeable. 
He created the programs to be free for everyone and it remains free today. Over the course of several years, with the much-needed help of stakeholders, the charity he now manages, Freedom’s Path Recovery Society was created from within the principles of the treatment programs. 
As well as managing the charity, David is a volunteer chaplain with the Calgary Police Service. He spends as much time as he can working with members, both sworn and civilian. David believes in education and is honored when he is asked to speak at schools, seminars, groups, workshops, and wherever else he may be invited.   

In this episode of the OC Podcast Dr. Rob Tanguay (just Rob;) ) and I sit down and dig into the great divide between harm reduction and abstinence based recovery and building bridges, reaching the lost and my absolute personal favorite message-having HOPE.  We talk about truly optimizing recovery, all forms of recovery. We discuss the prejudice, shame and stigma associated with addiction and mental health- it's jam packed this episode!


Rob's Bio:

Dr. Tanguay is a Psychiatrist who completed two fellowships, one in Addiction Medicine and one in Pain Medicine. He is a clinical assistant professor with the departments of Psychiatry and Surgery at the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary.
 
 He is the Medical Lead for Alberta Opioid Dependency training program and Alberta Addiction Education Sessions for Alberta Health Services. Dr. Tanguay is the Regional Director for Alberta and North West Territories for the Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine (CSAM) and the President of the Pain Society of Alberta.  He is the founder of the Opioid Deprescribing Program with Alberta Health Services and the Transitional Outpatient Pain Program for Spine (TOPPS) clinic working with spinal surgeons to optimize spinal surgery outcomes. Dr. Tanguay is the incoming co-chair of the AHS Alberta Pain Strategy.
 
 Dr. Tanguay is also the lead lecturer for Addiction for the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary. Academically, he is involved in research in addiction, chronic pain, opioids, and cannabis and is a member of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute and the Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research & Education at the University of Calgary.

Links to Connect with Rob:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-tanguay-253169140/?originalSubdomain=ca
https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/findhealth/service.aspx?id=1060378
https://twitter.com/drrobbietee?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

In this episode of the OC Podcast I sit down with Staff Sgt. Dominic Mayhew and we discuss Internet Child Exploitation.
 This conversation is not an easy one, it's not easy or comfortable to hear and to know but it's vitally important that we do- and quite honestly "vitally" does not even come close to describing or depicting how absolutely widespread, atrocious and inhuman this issue is.
 Every single parent should know this information and be mindful of this issue- "I had no idea" and "I never thought this could happen to us" is what every parent believed when they found out it happened to them. We must know better so we can do better and that's for all of us.
If there was ever a battle to fight, this is it.

Links for parents and youth:
https://needhelpnow.ca/app/en/
https://www.cybertip.ca/app/en/
https://www.protectchildren.ca/en/

https://calgarycrimestoppers.org/#:~:text=The%20Crime%20Stoppers%20tip%20line,law%20enforcement%20agency%20to%20investigate.

Staff Sergeant Dominic Mayhew is a 22 year member of the Calgary Police Service (CPS) currently seconded to the provincial government, ALERT team, heading the Southern Alberta Internet Child Exploitation team (ICE). Formerly a Detective in several areas of CPS, SSGT Mayhew has nearly a decade of experience of child related offences including work at the Child Advocacy Center – Child Abuse as well as the SSGT in CPS Community & Youth Section.

ALERT was established and is funded by the Alberta Government and is a compilation of the province’s most sophisticated law enforcement resources committed to tackling serious and organized crime. https://alert-ab.ca/