Serenity House is hosting its eighth annual Recovery Walk & Rally on Saturday, Sept. 24, 2022 from 11a.m.-2 p.m. The event will be held at Riverbank Park in downtown Flint.
FLINT, MI – Serenity House Communities is a Flint-based recovery community organization founded in 2015 by Tara Moreno-Wallen as a substance use disorder prevention service.
On Saturday, Sept. 24, SHC will continue its fight against substance abuse and drug addictions as it hosts its eighth annual Recovery Walk & Rally from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The event will be held at Riverbank Park, located at 328 Saginaw Street, in downtown Flint.
“This event is about celebrating recovery,” Moreno-Wallen told MLive-The Flint Journal. “It’s about knowing that healing does happen in recovery from STD, which is addiction of substance abuse disorder, codependency and trauma.”
SHC provides substance use and co-occurring disorders prevention for men, women, adolescents, and children.
About 176 people die each day in the U.S. from an overdose, according to SHC.
Moreno-Wallen, a former news reporter, said she was inspired to create Serenity House Communities for a couple different reasons.
“The first reason is that we are a recovery community organization and there are about 140 recovery community organizations across the nation. And I saw a need with the advocacy piece, meaning that people in recovery, they typically don’t have a voice and there’s a stigma attached to recovery,” she said. “People just don’t talk about it. So we became an RCO (Recovery Community Organization) and part of what an RCO does is awareness events. So I decided to have our first walk and rally and it’s been happening every year.
“The second reason is providing recovery support services, that includes holistic medicine. We see a lot of Western medicine and we’re looking to kind of merge with Western medicine and saying Eastern is this incredible pathway. There are things like auricular acupuncture and Reiki and meditation and yoga, and all of these great things that can accentuate and help the recovery journey.”
Moreno-Wallen cited Genesee County has “one of the sickest counties in the state.” She said there is a major problem with people overdosing, specifically using heroin and prescription medicines.
“And what we understand at Serenity House is that substance use disorder is a symptom of deeper issues, and they most likely stem from issues with relationships,” she said. “And traumatic events, specifically childhood trauma.”
Free lunch will be provided along with a remembrance ceremony for individuals who died from an overdose.
State Rep. John Cherry (D-Flint) and Patrick Patterson, executive director at Blue Water Recovery Outreach Center, are expected to speak at the event.
“It’s a celebration out of the darkness and out of a hopeless state,” Moreno-Wallen said. “It’s to put a face and a voice to recovery because there are 20 million Americans in recovery right now.”
To register or donate, visit here.
Read more at The Flint Journal:
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