Leadership Award for Excellence in Mental Health
Dear Community,
I am writing with some great news. We recently received the USA National Leadership Award for Leadership Excellence in Digital Mental Health Implementation. The award was presented by the eMental Health International Collaborative (eMHIC) at the 9th Digital Mental Health International Congress. eMHIC honors excellence in digital mental health. I flew up to Ottawa to receive it on our behalf. It is a high honor for our community!
Here is my acceptance speech. If I can find a video then I’ll share it soon. (Edit here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgL5UERnQ4U&ab_channel=7Cups)
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Thank you for this significant honor!
I was talking to a friend about the mental health field and how challenging it can be; like a big puzzle.
I have 4 kids. I’ve put together a lot of puzzles. My favorite ones are the 4 piece wooden puzzles with big pieces. My kids graduated to 20, 100, and 1000 piece puzzles.
The bigger the puzzle the bigger the box. How big would the box be that holds the mental health puzzle? Is the puzzle 10 billion pieces, 100 billion pieces? The box would likely be the size of this room or bigger.
Events like this remind us that we are not alone. We are friends all working together to solve this giant puzzle. Some of you have been working on the corners. Some have been working on the challenging middle sections.
Sometimes we get lucky and we accidentally solve a part of the puzzle without realizing it. That happened with us on internationalization. We were one of the first free mental health services. Millions of people have come to 7 Cups and we likely have thousands of volunteer listeners in your country. If you go to 7cups.com and scroll down to the number of people helped you can see how many people we’ve reached in your country.
We will happily connect users from 7 Cups to your services. We are on the cloud and you are on the ground. Just reach out and let me know.
This is a big puzzle we are solving. A special thank you to Anil for bringing us together and helping us realize that we are not alone and can lean on one another for help, especially when we can’t find that piece we are looking for. It is likely that someone in this room has seen it and can point us in the right direction.
Thank you again!
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I wanted to take a minute and unpack what this means for all of us. We have been working on our part, the 7 Cups part, of the mental health puzzle together for 11 years now. Every single one of us has found pieces and slid them into place. Many of you have put giant sections together. I have spent months hunting for pieces only to find out that a few of you put together a 10,000 piece section in a small corner of the site. This has happened countless times. We are all excellent puzzle masters!
I could not be more proud of us (sorry for another metaphor); We built a shining city on the Internet (likely the toughest place to build a city as all the bad guys are just one click away). In the beginning, it was incredibly challenging but with time, we have gained more and more mastery. Now our gardens predictably yield fruit and vegetables and the trains run on time!
And we have made a lot of mistakes. We learn through failure. Innovation is another way of saying ‘I don’t know how to do it’ or ‘It hasn’t been done before’. Through following the problem is the path approach, solving one challenge after another, the path has revealed itself to us. We went from never being able to find enough listeners in the summer of 2013 to now being recognized as leaders in mental health implementation. We won this! Our community! What a great story!
On 7 Cups, we do an amazing job of collaborating and not competing. We know that when one person is lifted up, we are all lifted up. This is the essence of community. When a person succeeds, we all succeed. I would love for the broader mental health field to have this same approach. The pain and suffering is too much for people to be taking potshots at one another. We have timely and important work to do and we are all needed to help build the puzzle.
I’m imagining we are in a tavern in a Tolkien story. There is song and dancing. Lift up your mug with whatever you’ve got in it and share a toast in the comments below.
My toast to all of you:
Thank you for your trust, your love, your patience, and your dedication. You have held out lanterns in the darkness. You have healed deep wounds. You have taught me about community. I humbly thank you for walking with me on this path. Cheers!
To help us celebrate, we ask you to share the word! Please share our press release link with family and friends via social media - this is a win for all of us!
@GlenM - as a long-term fan and early adopter of 7Cups, it was such and honour and excitement for me to be the one to present you with the award, and share with the global eMental Health Community what the 7Cups community has been able to achieve.
It is an incredibly well deserved award and you should all be very proud.
Taimi - MH Commissioner, South Australia
@tigerstew Thank you Taimi! It was a delight to meet you. Sometimes you come across a kindred spirt and you sense "this person gets it in a deep and unspoken way" and that is what I thought of you. Thank you for being an early adopter of 7 Cups and for giving us this award! I think you can sense in these comments collective purpose and joy; And what a remarkable twist in the story to know that you were one of our very early users and telling everyone else about us on the other side of the planet! It reminds me of that quote that you can only connect the dots looking backwards.
Thank you for your life of service, your clear and strong message of hope, and your lifting of us all up. We are all honored and deeply thankful for the recognition you have given us. It means the world to us 🙏💗✨!
@GlenM Yay! Congrats to you and to all of us here! What a wonderful way to acknowledge what we do here!
Thank you @GlenM for sharing with us! 🙏😊 I am so proud to be a part of this wonderful journey ❤️ There's a long way ahead for our kind, compassionate and supportive community, so for your leadership milestones.
Thanks to your leadership and guidance, we are inspired to keep growing and moving forward. May our thriving family continue to touch millions of hearts! Our heartfelt gratitude to you @GlenM, entire admin team, technical and other contributors, leaders, listeners, members and every single person.
Love you 7 Cups family 🌟
@WeEarth thank you for being a source of hope for us WeEarth! You are always present sharing a kind word and an encouraging thought. I especially liked this part of your comment, "May our thriving family continue to touch millions of hearts!" We love you too!
@GlenM
It would be my pleasure 😊🙏
Congratulations to everyone on this remarkable achievement and this is a proud moment for all of us. Let's continue to grow, inspire, and achieve even greater milestones.
@GlenM
Congratulations on this incredible achievement! 🌟 Receiving the USA National Leadership Award is such a well-deserved honor for the entire community! Your passion and commitment to digital mental health are truly inspiring.
As a newcomer, I’m excited to be part of a community that not only values collaboration but also uplifts one another in our shared mission. Your dedication motivates me to engage more and contribute in any way I can. It’s heartwarming to see how our collective efforts can create real change in people’s lives.
Thank you for leading the way and showing us what’s possible when we come together. Here’s to all of us, working hand in hand to make a difference! Cheers to brighter days ahead! 🥂❤️