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
You can really feel the pride and excitement in these words. 7 Cups is this huge, ever-growing community, and it takes a lot of teamwork to bring it all together. It has come a long way since 2013 and it has been amazing to see each step it has taken and be a part of it. Raising my "glass" for a big cheers to the whole community for this huge honor!
@Jenna Thank you for being a key part of this journey, walking with us and serving our community for 10 years! Big Cheers!
@GlenM Way to go. I am very proud of this community.
7 Cups is such a great and caring place to be with all of you who provide buckets full of empathy, compassion and support. All of you are amazing and you uplift one another so beautifully. I've had the greatest honour in getting to know some of you and I look forward to getting to know many more of you! We are all in this together and working to provide care and support to those who need it. Each puzzle piece we complete together is such important work that we make happen!
Each of you contribute to 7 Cups in wonderful ways and you should be so proud of how far you have come to help others. Congratulations to 7 Cups on winning another well-deserved award!
@LisaMeighanMScGMBPsS Thank you Lisa! I appreciate all of your kind, conscientious and thoughtful work! You do an excellent job of bridging the clinical and community aspects of the site! An important part of the puzzle!
@LisaMeighanMScGMBPsS
❤️❤️❤️
@GlenM
What an incredible honor! Congratulations Glen, how far you have come. This is a shining moment in 7 cups history, enjoy every moment of it. This well deserved accolade symbolizes all of the countless hours put in by volunteers worldwide and I am proud to be apart of that. May this beautiful sanctuary that is 7 cups continue its growth, message and mission to bring healing and community to those who need it. 💗
@GlenM Congratulations Glen and Community. With everyone's efforts and support, 7cups is the ever-evolving community to ensure we bring the best support for all. Way to go!
T h a n k Y o u T o A l l!! 🙏
Cheers everyone!
I want to take this opportunity to thank every member of mine, for trusting me with their story, and every listener, for making me smile, and giving me strength, after difficult chats.
I hope to meet many more of you, and to be able to talk to all of you for a long time to come.
@GlenM
What an honor, and your choice of analogy was unparalleled. "It is likely that someone in this room has seen it and can point us in the right direction." This sentence stood out to me, a perfect example of why we shouldn't be afraid to ask for help or collaborate with others. They can lead us, to exactly where we need to be.
@peacefulpurple08 really glad you like it! What we are trying to do here is nearly impossible - I mean incredibly challenging - we really need all of us to help sort it out, because it is just way too difficult. We've come such a long ways. 11 years is a very long time, but still so much further to go. It reminds me of that proverb, "If you want to go fast go alone. If you want to go far, go together."