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The Opioid Project exhibit will be displayed in the FCCN sanctuary from Sept 1- 22. It is sponsored by SOAR Natick and The Journey, made possible by a generous grant from The Reddish Foundation.

This exhibit is the result of a workshop held in 2018 by Health Story Collaborative, a partnership between visual artist Nancy Marks and Dr Annie Brewster, an internist at MGH.  Through this workshop, the founders sought to “create a healing space for people dealing with stigmatized loss… and to give people managing the loss a sense that they were fighting the epidemic.”

The workshop was designed to provide an avenue for the grief of losing a loved one to substance use disorder. In the workshop, the participants created a visual memorial of their loved one. Additionally, each person recorded a story of their loved one, one that told who they were as a “full, contextualized person”, including their “talents, joys and humor.”

These stories are powerful.  Despite struggles with substance use disorder, these individuals had positive attributes and loving families. These stories tell of people from our community who come from good families, people who could be your family member, neighbor, or friend.

By telling these stories of the human toll of the Opioid Crisis, this exhibit hopes to create change within our communities, to reduce stigma toward those affected by substance use disorder, and to promote frank conversations about addiction and the urgent need for treatment and recovery services.